Time Phantom: The DeLorean Chronicles
by Chaltab
Summary: The future is bleak when an evil plot by Vlad Plasmius spells doom for everyone. Now it's up to Marty McFly and Danny Phantom to save the future from Vlad Plasmius and his evil amulet. Will they succeed or will Vlad dance on their graves? BTTF Crossover.
1. Tragic Happenings

**Author's Note: **This fic started out as the brain child of a crazy idea I had. That was, to get a bunch of characters with the same voice actors/actresses together and hilarity would ensue. Right? Maybe not. I wisely decided the fic should take a different direction.

Later, I was going to make this a Danny Phantom/Teen Titans Crossover. But that didn't pan out either, mostly because Legend Maker's fic _Danny's Inferno_ gave me that fix. In the interveining months between chapters two and three, while I was dormant as a writer, this fic became an unofficial sequel to _Danny's Inferno--_per Legend Maker's permission, of course. She also became the beta for several of the more recent chapters. This story will refer back to Danny's Inferno in mild portions. It is perfectly comprehensible without reading it, but I encourage you to anyway. 'Tis really good. But read this first... because hers is better and I don't want mine to look like crap by comparison.

Also, this was once deleted when FFN banned songfics and re-published, so this is actually my first fanfic. As such, I acknowledge that my prose is a bit purple and the plot is extremely far-fetched and some scenes and ideas aren't developed nearly enough.

**

* * *

-Cue An imaginary Epic Theme-**

**We pan over a darkened Amity Park. Red lighting Flashes in the air and words appear in its wake.**

Chaltab Presents

In association with Legend Maker

Danny Phantom

The Fairly Odd Parents

&

the time traveling duo of Back to the Future

with cameos of various characters from DC comics

in

The Semi-Offical Sequel to Danny's Inferno

**TIME PHANTOM**

**A Tragic Sequence of Happenings**

* * *

**Amity Park, Indiana**

** Friday, January 28, 2005****  
**

** 4:01 PM**

Danny Fenton, a teenager with black hair and blue eyes, was walking home with his friends, Tucker Foley, a techno geek, and his ultra-liberal gothic friend Samantha Manson. The three shared a secret, a secret that could, if ever revealed, threaten Danny's very life. Because Danny Fenton isn't an ordinary teenager. He has been endowed with the powers of ghosts--and spends his free time as the superhero Danny Phantom.

"Tucker, I can't believe I let you talk me into going with you two to the Technology fair," said the disgruntled Sam. "I hate technology!"

"You school both of us at Doomed, and you hate technology?" shot back Tucker.

"Doomed is not technology," replied the offbeat goth, "it's art."

"Right," replied Tucker and Danny simultaneously, voices thick with sarcasm.

After a beat, Sam asked, "Hey Danny, why are you wasting your Friday at a techno-geek convention? You're not into tech that much."

"I know," said Danny dejectedly, "but my dad is showing off some of his ghost-catching technology, and he conscripted me to help him unload it."

"Bummer," agreed Sam, but Tucker was too stoked to understand. Techno-geek was his thing, after all.

Several yards back lingered Danny's only fully human enemy,Valerie Gray, trailed the three friends from a distance, hoping to learn something important. Danny and his stupid dog had cost her family everything, and she wanted—no, needed—revenge. And Danny's death suited her just fine. Mysterious packages from Wisconsin had contained technology, technology that Valerie had used to fight the Phantom Kid in the past. He had won the first round, but she'd end his life eventually. And now it seemed his own father would help her.

* * *

Meanwhile, on the other side of town, three sonic booms are heard. A flash of light produces and unusual sight: an eighties model DeLorean Motors sportscar erupts from nowhere, covered in sublimated water. The gull-wing doors open on both the passenger and drivers sides, and out step a young man, probably younger than thirty, and an older man, who has white hair despite his much-younger facial features. 

"Marty," says the older man. "We've made it. Amity Park, Indiana, January 28, 2005."

"That's great, Doc," says the younger man. His voice sounds almost identical to Danny's. "Now where is this technology fair?"

"According to my research," says Doc, "It should be on the West side of town. C'mon, we'll find it." With that, the two visitors from another time get back in the car. But this time, it's wheels fold down horizontal, and it lifts off the ground. This car can fly! It speeds away in the direction the sun will soon be setting, hoping to undo the nightmare that Valerie Grey has made of the future.

* * *

** Friday January 28, 2005, Dimmsdale, California**

"AAHHH!" Yelled a nasally voice, dodging a shot from a flame thrower. The still-evil baby-sitter Vicky, aged 20, charged the soon-to-be thirteen Timmy Tuner. "This is unbelievable! She's a full fleged adult now, and she still loves to torture minors!" Timmy ran up the stairs of his two-story house and locked himself in his room.

Quickly barricading the door shut, Timmy darted to his fish bowl, and knelt, now too tall to talk to two certain somebodies without bending over. The goldfish, one with pink eyes and the other with green, suddenly disappeared, and became two humanoid creatures hovering above the bowl. Fairy Godparents! "Is Vicky still giving you trouble?" asked the pink haired fairy, Wanda. "I can't believe they let her do this still; shouldn't she be in college?"

"I don't care where she should be," yelled Timmy. "I just want to be somewhere else! Somewhere far away! No. I want to be some_**when**_ far away. I wish I had my Time Scooter!"

Cosmo and Wanda raised their glowing wands, which were abruptly dulled by a farting noise. "Oh great. Now what?" asked Timmy.

Suddenly, a giant book called "Da Rules," appeared by Wanda. It contained all the rules that must be obeyed by godparents. Wanda frowned, "Ever since you screwed up Crocker's child hood there has been a debate on whether we should grant time travel requests. They've finally decided that we can no longer grant temporal wishes."

"Oh, great," said Timmy. "I suppose I can thank that idiot who screwed up McGovern's election for that one."

"Well at least it wasn't my fault this time like it usually is," piped in Cosmo. Wanda's husband was funny, but undeniably stupid.

"I've got it!" blurted Timmy, ignoring Cosmo. "I wish I knew where a Time Machine was located."

Wanda glanced back at the rules, and then nodded. "Nothing that says we can't help you find a time machine, sport. Lets see."

Wanda poofed in a crystal ball, and after a few minutes it simply showed a bird's eye view of Amity Park, Wyoming, and an eighties model sports car. "There you go, sport," she said.

"That looks even less modern than a Striker-Z," Timmy sighed, "but I guess it will do. I wish I was in Amity Park!" The two fairies' wands went up again, this time blasting a magic teleportation bubble around themselves and Timmy. So, when the door to Timmy's room and its supporting barricades finally disintegrated under the heat of Vicky's flamethrower, her favorite twerp was gone, and Vicky was left with the Turner household to herself.

* * *

**Amity Park, Indiana, 6PM. Friday, January 28, 2005**

Danny had just finished polishing the Specter Speeder, when his ghost sense triggered. A chilly blast of ectoplasm escaped from his mouth, and he looked around, preparing to fight. "Tucker," he called, "get over here."

Tucker arrived shortly. "What's up Danny? You look like you've seen a ghost?"

"Knock it off, Tucker," Danny whispered. "I just sensed one."

"Well it can't be Technus," said Tucker. "He's still trapped in level zero of Doomed, right?"

"I don't know, Tucker. Maybe a Ghost _can_ escape it." Then Danny spotted the PFP, the new Portable Fenton Portal, that his dad was trying to set up. He was so busy with his adjustments he didn't realize he'd turned it on by mistake. Thee was a small ghost, wearing overalls and a movers hat. The Box Ghost, Danny recognized. He flew around the show floor, causing the cardboard boxes to hover off the ground. Suddenly, he became visible to the rest of the fair-goers, as evidenced by their screams of fright. He wouldn't hurt anyone, Danny thought. But just to be on the safe side, he ducked into a porta-potty. "I'm going ghost!" Danny screamed, though he'd used that battle cry less and less since he'd met Vlad Plasmius, the only other human-ghost hybrid in existence... That he knew of...

Not wanting to remind himself of his perpetual inability to defeat Vlad, he charged, invisible, into the tent and slugged the Box Ghost, sending his weightless body flying out side. Danny flew up out of the tent, making himself visible to the box Ghost.

"You!" the Box Ghost shouted, "I am the BOX GHOST, master of all containers square and cardboard. Beware!"

"Yeah," replied Danny, "I think we've met before!" A he said this, he grunted and threw another haymaker, driving his fist into the BG's gut. Briefly, Tucker appeared outside and threw Danny a Fenton Thermos, an average thermos redesigned by Jack Fenton to catch apparitions. Danny squeazed off a round and watched the Box Ghost disappear into the cylindrical container. Danny waved a 'Thank you' at Tucker, who waved back briefly, only to be suddenly hit by a flying net. Danny looked the direction from which it came.

And there he saw his only living arch-enemy, Valerie Gray.

* * *

_End Note: The tense shifts during the Doc and Marty scenes were some sort of stupid artsy attempt to portray them as always 'in the present' or something. Don't ask. I was an idiot in 2005.  
_


	2. Sins of the Hero

**Amity Park, Indiana**

**Friday January 28, 2005**

**POOF...  
**

Suddenly, where there had been only a few trees, there was a child. Timmy Turner glanced at his two wristbands, one pink and on green. They were Cosmo and Wanda! Running down the street, Timmy found the technology fair. But everything was in chaos! There was somesort of battle going on above the area where the fair was being held. A female figure in a tight red body suit and combat helmet was riding on a metal device that was appearantly powered by rockets. And the other figure was a male in a black jumpsuit. He had white hair and his green eyes seemed to glow. "Wanda," he whispered, "who is that? He seems familiar."

"I dunno, sport," replied the pink wristband. "He does look familiar, though."

"It's Danny Phantom!" yelled Cosmo.Suddenly, he poofed off Timmy's wrist and hovered in fairy from above Timmy waving at Danny Phantom! "HEY DANNY! I'm your biggest fan!"

"Cosmo, you idiot!" yelled Timmy and Wanda simultaneously. Wanda raised a wand and Cosmo suddenly poofed back to being a wristband. If any human who did not have Farily Godparents learned that Timmy did, then they would be forcefully taken away forever. He'd seen it happen to them twice, once when they were the faries of his teacher Denzel Crocker back in 1972, and once when he'd revealed the secret to save them from the same Crocker. Thankfully his magic muffin had granted his rule-free wish to have them back. Either way, it was just as painful to watch them sucked into the book as it was for them to be sucked there. And Timmy was out of rule-free wishes. Sure, he'd had two consecutive fairy-versaries since then, but he'd eaten those muffins as soon as he'd recieved them to avoid another Catastrophe.

But the past was in the past, which was exactly where Timmy wanted to go. "Guys," he whispered, "I wish I had something to point me in the right direction of the Time Machine."

Just as it poofed into existence, an old model sportscar whizzed by, but several hundred feet above the ground. The driver apparently took it low when he noticed the battle raging abvoe the tent. The car landed and two adults ran out, one in a lab coat and the other wearing more normal clothing. Timmy held up the Time Machine Radar and it pointed in the direction of the car.

"Oh great," Timmy remarked. "I find a non-magical time machine and it just happens to be a car! And I can't drive!" Timmy let his dejection show, until he had an idea. "Guys," he addressed the wristbands, "I wish I could drive that car!"

The wands went up again, but again they made the farting noise. "Timmy," Wanda warned, "we can't grant wishes that would allow illiegal activity.."

"And that means you can't drive a car unless you have us when you're sixteen," finished Cosmo. "And your town-hero driver's liscense is only valid in Dimmsdale!"

Timmy smacked himself in the head. Great Turner, just great. "Fine," he told the fairies, "I'll just figure it out myself."

* * *

Doc and Marty make their way through the booths of the tech fair. The devices they're looking for are so incredible, that Marty wouldn't believe they could exist if he hadn't seen the future with his own eyes. Somehow, Valerie Grey, the seemingly imortal tyrant found a device that would unleash an army of ghosts-Doc called them ectoplasmic beings-and the other was a powersuit that allowed her to control them. The most disturbing thing is, that it was something related to Marty's career as a rock star that allowed this to happen, because they'd been to a version of the future-ten years still from this point-where Dictator Gray never ruled anything. Suddenly, Doc spots one of the devices. It is called the Ghost Portal. A very large man in an orange jumpsuit stands next to it, examining it from the side, seemingly obvlivous to the fact that it is both on, and releasing ghosts. 

"Doc," saysMarty, "look over there. The machine is already on!"

"Great Scott!" yells the scientest, Emett L. Brown. "It would seem we've arrived too late to prevent the machine from being turned on."

The pair of Time Travelers runs over to the large man, Jack Fenton, inventor of the ghost portal and unwitting acomplise in the reign of Dictator Gray. "Can I help you?" Says Jack.

"Jack Fenton," starts Doc, "Hello, I am doctor Emmet Brown, I..um... need to have a word with you about apparitions."

"GHOSTS?" Blurts the scientist, obvioulsy even more excentric than Doc."Ghosts are my specialty, but I'm sure you know that if you know my name. What is it you need?"

"Mr. Fenton," says Doc gravely, "I don't know how else to say this: I'm from the future. I have returned from the year 2014 to warn you that your invention will fall into the wrong hands today."

At that, Jack Fenton begins rolling on the floor laughing, ridiculing the notion of Time Travel.

"Hey, Jack!" Marty screams, "If you havent noticed, that portal of yours is on and spewing out gho.. I mean ectoplasmic beings.." Marty saying the last part with a sigh, looking at Doc derisively. Doc told him that it was unscientific to refer to them as such.

Jack now snaps into a sitting position, finally noticing the terror his device is causing. He runs to the front, where the portal is on and spewing forth ghost after ghost. "SUFFERING SPOOKS!" he yells. Grabbing several nearby devices all labeled Fenton Ghost Hunting, Jack runs after the ghosts, trying to catch them.

"Doc..This has gotten really heavy."

"Marty, get over here and help me shut this thing down!" Doc yells, kneeling next to the Fenton Portal "Right," sighs Marty...

* * *

Meanwhile, the fight beteen Danny and Valerie has accelearted. Danny ducked a bunch of shots from her ectoplasmic ray-guns, only to be kicked in the face when she jumped off her board. Danny ran around behind a tree, and phased through it with his ability to go intangable, and slugged the ghost-hunting witch in the face. Valerie flew back into a park bench, breaking it in half. 

Suddenly, Danny felt cold, and his breath showed up again. He'd been so distracted during the battle he'd not realized that the city was now crawling with ghosts. Running across the lawn, he leapt into the air, and flew towards a pack of Ectopusses. Somesort of dead but sentient Octopus, the ectopusses were hardly any threat to him, but they were capable of harming humans.

"Time to die, ghost boy!" a raspy female voice said from behind. Danny turned to see Valerie pointing another weapon at him. Just as he was about to dodge it, the nearest ectopus grabbed him, holding him for just long enough for the strange projectile to scrape is stomach. Now Danny was in mortal fear of death. Despite being half-ghost, the idea of death still haunted him. What would happen to a halfa who died? would he become all-ghost, or would he dissapear altogether? Neither sounded pleasant. He struggled against the cool tentacles of the ectopus, growing in despair as Valerie reloaded the gun.

She cocked the weapon, taking careful aim. Danny's side ached from the previous wound.

Valerie hoisted the weapon, pointing it at Danny's head. This was it.

NO! THIS CAN'T BE IT! yelled Danny's mind... Not yet fifteen, he was much too young to be completely ghost.

Suddenly, Danny felt strenghth and speed, his struggling paid off, as the ectopuss erupted into a ball of green fire as an equally green aura surrounded Danny. He focused an ectobeam, right at Valerie. The beam burned with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns, tearing through the projectile, through the gun, and through Valerie!

"LEAVE ME ALONE!" Danny screamed as he unleashed his fury.

He sank to the ground, exhausted. Stumbling across the street to the place where Valerie lay, he had a sinking feeling in his stomach, in his chest, that only grew as she stayed still. It couldn't be... could it?

_No...!_ Danny's mind screamed... But it was true. Valerie lay motionless, still. The red jumpsuit around her head and shoulders was burned off, leaving no doubt.

Valerie Gray was dead... And Danny Phantom had killed her.


	3. Worst Case Scenario

_Writer's Note: I do not own anything portrayed here. That sort of goes without saying._

* * *

**Amity Park, Wyoming Friday January 28, 2005**

Danny stood up on shaky legs, his mouth hanging open, gaping at what he had just done. His mind began swimming, _murderer, _it yelled at him. And it was indeed all his fault, even if it was an accident, he was guilty of manslaughter at least. He stumbeled back trying to collect himself. What could he do? He had killed a fifteen year old girl who'd seen enough personal tragedy in the past year to fill... Well.. her life wasn't _that _tragic, now that he thought of it. So what if that ghost dog had accidently wrecked the lab her dad was supposed to be securing. So what if the contract was lost and her dad became poor? She'd deal with it! She still had it better than half the world anyway.

But she didn't have _anything _anymore... She'd been ejected from her body by a blast of ectoplasm--the strongest he'd used since...

Suddenly, a blue cloud escaped his mouth as something triggered his ghost sense. And then, the area infront of him shimmered as a figure became visible. A figure clad in white and red, with green skin, and the ugliest hairstyle this side of anime. Danny's emotions were a mixture of fury and confusion as he saw the sickeningly satisfied grin on his face...

"Vlad..." Danny stated with the same emotional mixture. Suddenly it made sense. It was _Vlad_ that supplied Valerie with her arsenal! It was Vlad who gave her the ghost-hunting gadgets! "This... THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!" Danny screamed, taking a swing at his arch nemisis.

Vlad lazily blocked the blow, grabbed Danny's fist, twisted it, and threw him against the ground. "You know, Daniel," Vlad quipped,"or should I say _Inviso-Bill, _if this town hated you before, they're really going to burn you at the stake now." His smarmy rich bloake accent seemed almost tame compared to the combination of mock and acid with which he said "Inviso Bill"...

Danny fired another ecto blast, angrier than ever at Vlad Plasmiusthe man who wanted to murder his dad and steal his mom and the monster who was responsible for Valeries death!

_Not entirely responsible, _quipped Danny's super-ego.

Vlad also deflected that with ease. Then he did something that surprised Danny. He removed a remote from his right hand, which had remained behind his back throughout the confrontation so far. "Daniel. I am only going to say this once. You and your mother will join me as pupil and wife respectively, or your father dies here and now. What do you say?" An evil grin played across his face.

"I'll never join you, Vlad." Danny shot back. "When are you going to hammer that into your thick Machevellian skull!?"

Vlad pressed a button on the remote.

* * *

Marty and Doc Brown, after several fruitless attemps to turn off the ghost portal, gasp in horror has a strange robotically-armoured apperation appears infront of them, yanking the small portal up by it's base, severing the power cord. The portal turns off immediately and Marty smacks himself in the head, _Think, McFly, Think, _echoing in his mind.

The large robotic ghost is accompanied by several other ectoplasmic beings, one of them very similar in style to Doc himself. He seems giddy at the sight of all the technology, abandoned by the fleeing humans. And of course, being the Master of Long-Winded introductions that Technus is, he cannot resist saying something to the only 2 remaing humans in the tent, other than the oblivous Jack Fenton..."I, Technus, hip and groovy master of all technology, will now shizzle your dizzle by destroying you and taking your wonderful technology to build my new body!" He procedes to make good on this threat, but in reverse order. All the non-ghost hunting tech in the room suddenly flies into the air and forms a body of gadgets around Technus. Then he fires several usless items at Marty and Doc as they dash towards the exit of the tent.

"Run for it Marty!" Doc yells.. But before they get far, the world suddenly becomes white... Then black.

* * *

Outside the town hall, Timmy eyed his prize. The 1982 model DMC had several strange gadgets on the back, one of them labled "Mr. Fusion."

"I wonder what that means," Timmy says to his fairly odd wristbands. "Sounds like the name of a lame energy drink parody."

"Maybe it's like a super hero!" Cosmo yells, "or a super villain from a comic book!"

"Whatever," comments Timmy. "You guys can't give me the skills or the liscense to drive, but we can stow-away! I wish we were in stealth mode!" Stealth mode was a little something Timmy had concieved of when he was eleven. Cosmo and Wanda would make both themselves and Timmy invisible, and their voices were only audible to each other. Cosmo and Wanda raised their wands and suddenly, Timmy and his pink and green wristbands were completely invisble to even the most advanced stealth detection systems.

"Yeah, Sam Fisher ain't got nothin' on me," Timmy joked as he jumped in the car, and removed his Gamebuddy Plus from his pocket. He might as well pass the time with some _Super Mangler Brothers_ until whoever could drive the car got back. Then he'd make his move... But suddenly, the Gambuddy went awry, and a huge flash filled the windshield of the Delorean, followed shortly by an enourmous thunder clap with enough decibels to pump some adrenaline into the Head Pixie.

Danny looked up and saw the remains of the tent where the tech fair had been. In the center of the blast sat a ball of tent materials and table peices and gore, in a perfect spear... And his dad's orange hazmat suit, stained red from blood, was part of that spear. Danny wept, anger boiling inside him...

"I warned you," Vlad said cooly. "You thought you called my bluff?" He gave a derisive snort and another evil smirk."You called wrong."

Vlad turned intangible while Danny was paralyzed by grief, and slid into Valeries lifeless form. He spoke from that body in her voice. "Let this be a lesson that **_nobody _**crosses Vlad Masters." And as he flew away, he spoke in his own. "By the way, Daniel. I did finally break down and get a cat. His name is Jack, if you're curious."

Danny's white transformation rings slid into being and he powered down to human form. His grief overwhelmed him. Killing Valerie was bad enough, but having his father murdered within the same ten minutes. His body just couldn't handle it in the end, and he passed out...


	4. The Aftermath

**Amity Park, Wyoming Friday January 28, 2005 7:48 PM**

Danny slowly slid awake, hoping beyond hope that all the terrible things he just experienced was a terrible nightmare. But the almost physical ache in his heart told him that was highly unlikely. It hurt so bad he couldn't even show it. He couldn't cry. He couldn't scream. It was like a void that sucked in his ability to emote. He turned over, on a lavish faint couch. He recognized that he was in Sam's living room. A dark skinned yellow blur shifted to him, reaching out a hand.

"Danny?" Tucker said, relief and sorrow intermingled in his voice. "Are you ok?"

Danny just sat there. He looked up at his friend, then down at the floor, but he couldn't say a word. Vlad had taken from him two things that could never be replaced; his chance to bring about Valerie's redemption. And his father. Suddenly, the pain was gone. Just has he had felt fighting Sizzle last September, with the Teen Titans defeated and his town in ruins. It was all gone, replaced by a burning rage at the one who would dare hurt his family. His friends. Or even his enemies. After what seemed like an epoch, he looked back at Tucker. Strangely neither his fury at Vlad or his grief were primary at this point. He just asked, "Tucker, was anyone else hurt?"

Tucker seemed surprised at the question, his glasses almost falling off his face from goggling. Then Sam walked in the room, carrying tray with three Sunkist on it. She sat it down and Danny took one, and she answered the question he'd asked Tucker...

"There were a few injuries. Appearantly what ever it was caused an implosion within the tent, so it all collapsed inward.. The pressure was so great that a small amount of hydrogen fused around the center and caused a miniature atomic blast..."

Just then, the door burst open, and Maddie and Jazz Fenton, Danny's mother and sister respectively, ran in, eyes stained with tears, and embraced Danny. As Sam and Tucker left the room, they heard Danny's mom. All she could say was "Oh Danny. Oh Danny.."

And now, with the catalyst of his mother and sister, Danny can let the tears flow...

**Meanwhile, at Amity Park General Hospital...**

Marty notices plenty of technological advances that we in 2005 might take for granted. Being a 27 year old rock star from 1995, Marty wasn't used to certain things, but most of it was failry familiar. Ten years effect less change then twenty or thirty. He knows that from very personal experience. Finally, he finds the room he was told to go to. The door reads, Brown, Emmet L. He enters quietly, not knowing if the Doc is asleep or awake. As Marty comes to his side, he notices several bruises on his arms and one on his forehead, in pretty much the same spot as the Flux Capacitor Bruise from 40 years ago. But asphault may be prone to do more dammage than a porcelian sink...

Doc Brown stirs, seeing Marty. "Great Scott, do I have a headache," Doc Brown tells him. "What in the name of Sir Isaac H. Newton happened?"

"Eh," replies Marty, "something about an implosion device and Hydrogen in the air fusing." At this, Doc's face contorts a bit. "There was one man killed, and we were the only injuries."

"Well at least there is some good news." Doc says. "Was the man killed named Fenton?"

"Uh, Yeah. I think so." Marty replies. He isn't insensitive, just thankfull he wasn't in the blast radius. And it may have come across as insisitve, but of course he knew it could be fixed with the good ol' DMC.

"Something changed," Doc said. "In the original history, there was no implosion device. Jack Fenton was still killed, but not that way. He was murdered by a g.. by an ectoplasmic being." Doc informed Marty, almost slipping on his own rule."By the way, did you get the newspaper out of the DeLorean?"

Marty produced the copy of USA Today, dated the very next day, Saturday January 29, 2005. The camera now zooms in on the headline

Superhero Massacre, with the subheading, 12 Super Heroes Lose Their Lives in early-moring Wisconsin Metabrawl. And the photo showed a dozen coffins, neatly lined and draped with American Flags. And on the one nearest the camera, there is a readable plaque. Daniel Fenton. Alias, The Phantom.

**Back in the Delorean...**

Timmy sits up, where he had just been almost asleep, suddenly having an epiphany. He had wished for an invisible back seat the care when someone had come in. He had taken only a newspaper out, and Timmy had glimpsed it, and the headline that hadn't happened yet. And it had seemed familiar, as though it triggered a memory in him. That was the epiphany. He had seen this town and that flying Phantom before. He'd saved the entire Western US (**Writer's note**: Go read Danny's Inferno, now. You know who you are, Slackers!) a few months back from a flame demon named Flamidia or something like that. But she'd destroyed the town, and Timmy had wished it back for him. He wished, not aloud, because Mr. and Mrs. literal were still in ear-shot, but in his head he wished that he could have seen the Phantom's reaction at the town mysteriously fixing itself.

He spoke his epiphany to a half asleep Wanda, who just mumbled something about knowing she should have trusted her "Bad feeling." Timmy sighed. Wanda had more bad feelings than Han Solo. Then again, there had been that semi-nuclear explosion a few hours ago...

Perhaps this time... (Oh, who was he kidding? Perhaps all the time!) Wanda was right...

**Amity Park, Wyoming Saturday January 28, 2005 2:32 AM**

Danny climbed out his room's second story window. His mother was still up, and Jazz was drowning the sorrows of her father's death in Hi Hi PuffyAmiYumi reruns and lots of chocolate. He slid down the gutter drain, hoping the extra inches he'd gained since the Ember concert didn't add enough wait to break the pipe. As he got to the bottom, he turned around and removed a Cell Phone. It wasn't just any ordinary Cell Phone though. The Teen Titan Cyborg, aka Victor Stone, had given it to him in the weeks following the battle with Sizzle, and it was a line directly to the Titans Tower in Jump City. He wasn't supposed to use it except in the direst of emergencies... and if Vlad had access to a Fetonworks Ghost Portal, there was a disaster of epic proportions looming on the Wisconsin horizon.

But before he'd dialed the third five in the seven didget number, he heared an attention getting whisper. He glanced to both sides, and listened. He heard it again from the alley next to his house, and stepped back there, ready to go ghost if something attacked him. Suddenly, a man who appeared to be in his late 20s or early 30s popped out of the shadows behind a trashcan. Wow, he's almost as good as Raven at that. Then his common sense kicked in and he assumed a semi-agressive defensive stance. "Who are you," he demanded.

The figure stepped farther into the light from the streetlight. "I am here to prevent you from making a huge mistake. If you fight Valerie Grey, she will kill you and all your allies." Danny was struck by how similar this guy's vocies sounded to his own. It was close enough that Danny could play this guy if he had is own cartoon! (If got that one, pat yourself on the back!)... Then the words sank in.

"How do you know who I am?" Danny asked.

"You are Daniel Fenton, right?" said the man, handing Marty somethng--a newspaper, that had been inside his coat.

I need to work on my reflexes. If that had been a gun or a knife... Danny thought. He opened the newspaper and read a headline that shouldn't have yet been printed. And saw the photo with the twelve coffins. And the one with his name on it, sitting there infront, announcng his secret identity and his demise to the whole world. It had occured to Danny that though there were many bad things that could happen to a superhero, there were three that took the proverbial cake as being the worst.

Accidently, through action or inaction, being responsible for loss of life.

Losing a family member because some crackpot villain discovered your secret identity.

And dying in vain.

And if this newspaper's herald came to pass, then all three would happen to him in less than one day...


	5. In Brightest Day

"Hey, Kids!" an eccentric looking man in a lab coat greets you. "I'm Bill Nye, The Science Guy!

"And I am Doctor Emmet Lathrop Brown." Doc Brown, no longer a cartoon, but like Bill Nye, a living, breathing human, says in a fairly restrained manner. Restrained for him, anyway.

"Today our experiment will be base on Ghosts!" Bill Nye says. As he pulls into the frame a chalk board, Doc Brown, goes off screen, only return briefly with a cart and a Fenton Ghost Portal on it. Then the two scientists begin to explain the concepts behind Ghost physiology in terms you can barely understand. Finally, after several minutes of fiddling, Doc Brown gets the machine to turn on…

And abruptly, Wulf, the Esperanto-speaking werewolf ghost pops out of the portal and tries to bites Bill Nye's head off. Literally! He dives to the floor whimpering and twitching.

"GREAT SCOTT!" Doc Brown exclaims, pressing a button on the portal, causing it to suck the Wulf back in and close the portal. "Perhaps I should stick to the science of Time Travel."

The screen fades to black.

_**(Imagine the Back to the Future Theme Song "Back in Time" by Huey Louis here)**_

**Amity Park, Saturday January, 9, 2005 5:45 AM.**

Danny walked slowly through the early morning. Even though it was late January, he didn't need any protection. Thanks to Sizzle, the local temperature had risen drastically, and it was a tolerable, if not confortable 58 F.

He was accompanied by the mysterious Future Man, who'd identified himself as Martin McFly, a semi-legendary minor Rock Star, famous along the west coast as the lead singer of the band the Pinheads. His mom had once told him that the Pinheads had played at a Beach Resort down in Dimmsdale, California, only about ten miles east of Marty's native Hill Valley.

Marty and Danny arrived at the car. There was crime-scene tape around the whole area, but some things were more urgent than an investigation. It was little more than a token gesture. The real villain was probably back in his castle in Wisconsin, probably waiting on Danny's surrender or counter attack….

**Master's Castle, 9 miles southwest of Green Bay.**

Vlad was, in fact, waiting, very impatiently, I might add, for one of those two things. He began to wonder why Danny didn't show up with and bust down his doors, and while he was at it, why not just call in a bunch of his metahuman buddies down in Jump City to help? Was he wising up to what Vlad had planned?

He hoped the second half ghost Jack's foolishness created would arrive soon. Vlad had to concentrate hard to stop the body of Valerie from decaying. Eventually he'd have to put it on ice, at least until he was able to create a suitable hard-light hologram. But for him to do that, he'd need more than money. There was some technology that nobody could sell. Yet at least. It was only a matter of time…

**Amity Park, 6AM**

I knew it was only a matter of time, a voice seemed to yell.

Timmy sat up strait. He'd been gone from his house for a while. But he could always wish his parents would forget that. Then it hit him: What woke me up! He looked out the window and saw the Phantom kid and the guy who'd arrived with the Time Machine coming, and with typical teenager grace (that is to say, infinitesimally small amounts of it) he leaped into the magic invisible back seat, accidentally kicking that Y-shaped flashy thing, cracking the glass. He hoped it wasn't too much of a problem…

Yeah. I'm sure you all know it's gonna be.

Marty handed Danny the newspaper, upon his request. Danny leaned against the DeLorean and read the newspaper.

In the early morning hours, in a field in Wisconsin, 20 of the world's finest superheroes were slain. Flags will undoubtedly being flying half-mast for weeks to come. The reason for the fight is as of yet unknown, but appearantly a teenage superhero known as The Phantom called in the Teen Titans…

Danny scrolled down the page, 'til it listed the deaths. Robert Candide…Koriand'r of Tamaran, alias Starfire…Ritchie Foley, alias Gear…… Noel Collins, Alias Savior; and Daniel Fenton, alias The Phantom.

Some of the names on the list weren't just teenagers. Vlad had taken out big name metahumans. Hawkgirl herself, Shaera of Thonogar, had died. Twenty in all. Danny turned to the guy from the past. "This happened because we made a stand."

"Yeah. How anti-cliché, don't you think."

"Then I'll go with you. I can go back and stop this from happening."

"Daniel.. Er.. Danny.. You and 19 other superheroes were killed by this guy! You won't be able to beat him, even if you team up with you past self. And even if you were to do that, you could cause a paradox!"

"That's bad, right?" Danny asked.

"Yes that's bad. According to Doc, a paradox could unravel the fabric of time and DESTROY THE UNIVERSE!"

"Uh. Trucking Skit comes to mind," Danny mock-swore. (Go read Danny's Inferno!)

"But the effects might be more localized. It might only destroy our own galaxy."

"That's a relief," said Danny sarcastically. Marty had a very strong feeling of Déjà vu.

The two got in the DMC. This wasn't the original, of course, as it had been destroyed by a train 20 years ago. The Doc had converted a new DeLorean he'd gotten from a salvage yard in 2020 and strapped to the top of the Time Train. When he and Clara had moved back to the present, he'd given the time vehicle to Marty as a gift, but Marty had no desire to travel through time after the ordeals he'd gone through. So Doc, not wanting to warm up the Train, had oft borrowed the Time Car. In which he'd gone to the future and discovered that something of Marty's rock and role career or his patronage of future establishments of business—no one could really know which—had butterflied into Valerie Gray—or in reality, Vlad Masters, the evil half ghost—controlling a good portion of the Northern United States by 2015. Marty engaged the engine. The car had been locked, and that didn't seem to have changed, so he gave no second thought to the condition of anything. He felt strangely urgent for a man sitting in a quasi-omnipotent time machine. Probably because all he really wanted to do was go home and be with Jennifer, and the shorter amount of time he spent away from 1995 the better.

So, with the Time Circuits engaged and the Fusion Gage reading full, he stepped on the accelerator.

The speedometer climbed… 38

48

68

80

85

86

87

88…

90!

"What the?" Marty said. He looked back at the Flux Capacitor. Which was nost definitely not fluxing….

"What's wrong now?" Danny inquired, half whining. This was growing exasperating. He briefly wondered if dying in a Wisconsin field was such a bad thing. What am I saying? No. Vlad will pay for what he's done…

"The Flux Capacitor has been damaged. We can't time travel. In this car at least…"

Suddenly, two things occurred to Danny.

One: The care they were riding in was flying. He was so used to flying he'd barely noticed. But cars normally couldn't do it.

Two. The car was heading very quickly out of Amity Park and towards the coast. Towards Southern Cali.

"Where are we going?" Marty asked.

"I started something in 1995. And I'm betting the universe on whether I finished it.."

Danny sighed. "I wonder what important and life-altering, life saving causes the Teen Titans are championing now that I didn't get half of them killed.."

Jump City

The white strands of the Shimmer, Savior's nervous-system-based energy rope that could lift more than the average metahuman, flung Gauntlet over his head in a torturous swinging motion. That was the last time Robert would ever pour Nacho cheese, no matter how cold it was, on on his head!

"Aw **DARN IT, **Legend Maker!" Robert screamed! "I am not Noel's whipping boy!"

After that, Savior dropped Gauntlet against the wall. "Serves you right."

"Besides," piped in the leader Robin, "It's not even Legend Maker this time. It's some newbie who calls himself Chaltab."

"Is that why I can't even swear? I mean c'mon. I never say 'Darn it' do I?" Robert asked.

"Nope. Your mouth is usually fouler than Vanessa Carlton's singing," Cyborg said.

Raven looked up from her book, upset. "Rob, why is it that whenever you come around, the fourth wall comes crumbling down?"

"Beats the heck out of me," Robert said, cringing that such pseudo-swearing would ever escape his lips. "My **_gosh_**, Chaltab!" he yelled! "You're**_ killing _**me!"

"Man I am so glad I am not really angry," said Noel. "I'd hate to see how this guy butchers MY dialogue."

"When you're angry," piped in Terra, "Noel, Your mouth would be better compared to William Hung's singing."

_On second thought, maybe Danny's story is more important for now…._

**Writer's Note**: I apologize greatly for all the boring exposition. I really do, and I promise more action soon. This story doesn't lend itself well to spontaneity; so instead, I'll turn to Jump City and the Titans Tower for a much needed break… Action next chapter, I promise. Until then… Enjoy. For the Record, the original characters Noel Collins aka Savior and Robert Candide aka Gauntlet were created by Legend Maker's brother and Bobcat, respectively. Go read their stuff!


	6. In Blackest Night

**Amity Park **

Vlad hovered above the ruins of a smoking building. They called it the Nasty Burger, but that interested Vlad very little. He observed his army as they ransacked and plundered. He would force Danny out of hiding. And then, Danny would join him, or die.

The chief strategist and general of Vlad's army, the Ghost of a Nazi--a Nazi named Fox Rommel—floated up beside the scheming ghost overlord. "The plans are being executed as you wished, sir. Amity Park will fall before nightfall."

"Very well," replied Vlad, as he surveyed the destruction. "Have your units had any luck finding the Ghost Boy?"

"No, sir, we are still searching," replied Rommel repentantly.

Vlad was annoyed. He had expected the brash young hero to lead a charge, proverbial guns blazing. But it seemed he had disappeared entirely. "Very well. Keep up the search."

_Perhaps he killed himself_, Vlad let himself think. A constant worrier ever since Danny had proven himself a worth adversary time and again, despite his lack of experience, Vlad had wanted to give him one last chance. He **_would _**accept Vlad as master and father this time. Vlad knew it. And if not, though that was an unlikely worst-case scenario, Vlad would take pleasure in killing the one who had spurned him. No body was allowed to do that to Vlad Masters—Vlad Plasmius—and not suffer consequences. Well, except Maddie, of course…

**Near the town hall…**

Three green ectoplasmic lasers streaked over Jazz's head as she dived for cover behind the exploded remains of a Buick. Three hours ago, what could be called a small army of ghosts had randomly attacked, chanting "Valor E" over and over. Or, that was what they seemed to be chanting. It could have been "Val Orie" or "Val or E" or even…

Jazz gasped as the thought occurred to her. _Valerie._ The girl her brother had killed yesterday. Right before witnessing their dad's murder. The news papers had told the story. Someone had photographed both the Ghost that her dad had defeated in Wisconsin. (Jazz was smart, but she has shut most of that ordeal out of her mind since she hadn't believed in ghosts then. That, and she'd been in Vlad Master's personal theater the whole time and therefore only knew the hear say. Ergo, she still didn't know it was indeed Danny who had 'defeated' the white-suited ghost by forcing a truce.)..

But there was no time to worry about that, or where the heck Danny was at the moment, because an insane looking ghost spider had leaped at her mom!

"I am not becoming an orphan today!" Jazz yelled as she lashed out the Jack of Nine Tails and squeazed the spider ghost into globs of ecto-goo. Her mom waved a thanks and jumped up from behind the dumpster she was using for cover and fired a the Fenton Bazooka straight into the center of a small unit of ghosts. The were forcibly sucked into a spacial distortion, be it a wormhole or a ghost portal, Jazz neither knew nor cared.

Her mom leapt over the dumpster now, brandishing her ghost staff. She rushed them, slashing low and then blocking as a Samurai ghost who bore an eerie resemblance to Tom Cruise lashed at her with a katana. She back flipped over the slice and kicked him with her ghost repelling foot gauntlets, sending him flying backwards. Jazz fired her ghost pistol and loaded her melee weapon again (Hear on referred to as the Jack) Screaming as she charged. The Jack lashed out, rending a bear ghost into many pieces. Then she got back to back with her mom.

"DAZZLE ME!" they both said together. And the ghosts leapt at them, but they tore through the spectres like tearing through wet tissue...

But there were so many of them! ARGH!

"Dear," said Maddie. "we have to get out of here." She wasn't going to let her daughter die like Jack had...

The two women ran through the empty streets of Amity Park. The town was mostly vacant, at least the down town. Everyone was either shut up in their homes or skipping town entirely. Her brohter's hellacious fight against the fire ghost had taught them that when ghosts enter Amity Park, it is timefor the average Joe to exit.

Up ahead, Jazz and Maddie saw some shapes. They were human silhouhettes, at least 20 of them As the Fenton females approched, they realized that the group was indeed a group of police officers. The leader of this unit was a tall balding man who looked sort of like the schools Vice Principal Lancer, but with a brown mustache instead of a beard, and a little bit more hair on his head.

"Civilians," Lanceresque addressed Maddie and Jazz, but mostly Maddie, "I'm requesting you clear out. This town is under attack, and we're professionals. Get yourselves to safety." The officer waved his gun demonstratively and

"Officer," Maddie said, "guns won't work against these things. I'm Maddie Fenton." She stammered the next phrase... "Proprietor of Fentonworks… I specialize in paranormal science."

"Your Jack Fenton's wife? Then can you tell me what in the name of Joe Dirt is going on here?"

"What does it look like? An invasion of ghosts! I don't know where they're coming from, though." Which wasn't a total lie. She figured that whoever had stolen the portal from the Tech Fair had used said portal to conjure this small army. But she didn't know _where_ the portal was located. Probably far away from the disaster area Amity Park was becoming.

The officer gave a reluctant sigh, and said, "Fine. You can join us.."

Just ten the Samurai and several other ghosts rounded the corner and started bearing down on the cops. Several officers charged but where overwhelmed, and the Samurai ran his blade across the shoulders of one of the officers. His head hit the ground with a sickening thud and Maddie and Jazz cringed.

No blood came out, though. Jazz would wonder why later. Now she tossed on of her fathers' Ecto-Neg grenades, small bombs that disrupted ectoplasmic energy but were fairly harmless to humans. The Samurai dived out of the way at the last minute, but his squad wasn't so lucky. Caught in the blast, they couldn't maintain their forms and fell apart.

"Take that you freaks!" Jazz yelled. Then the Samurai charged her, baring down with surprising speed. He raised his blade to cut Jazz into. It came down fast and Jazz closed her eyes as she flinched, excpecting to join the ranks of the ghost army.

Only to here a clashing noise that Lucas Film would probably feel like suing for…

Maddie stood staring the Samurai in the eyes, here double-edged Soul Saber weapon-locked with his katana. Maddie spun backwards, swinging the staff in an exaggerated, but strong, arc to deter Samurai from pursuing. "If you want my daughter," Maddie said intensely, "You'll have to go through me."

The cops' bullets did nothing to the ghosts, but Jazz gave then the weapons from her belt she could spare. Her father had assembled enough ghost-fighting weaponry to fight a platoon of ghosts. She kept the Jack of Nine Tales, however, as she had destroyed her first ghost with it. And she kept one long range ghost pistol incase she was attacked by ranged foes.

Her mom was matching the Samurai blow-for-blow. It backflipped several times away from Maddie and re-grpped its sword. It ran at her again, sword raised. But before it could get there, Maddie charged it, slicing low as she rolled around behind it. The cut the Samurai made missed its mark by a long shot, and Maddie thrust the staff under the breastplate of the Samurai's armor running the glowing green end through his skin… Or whatever ghosts had where human skin was…

The Samurai exploded into ectoplasm vapors, and Maddie put her staff away. And ran over to Jazz.

"Mom. That was amazing!" Jazz said embracing her mother.

"Honey, we have to go. I can hear another group coming," Maddie said.

**Californian Desert, Dimmsdale Flatts district**

As the sun was setting Marty Landed the DeLorean on a tall sheer cliff. And jumped out and ran over to a nearby tarp, and began to untie the strings that held it down. It covered something. Danny, on the other hand, was having some trouble adjusting to the gullwing doors on the DMC, and tripped trying to get out…

He looked off the cliff and gasped… one could see for miles and miles. In the north, the desert stretched well over the horizon. To the west, you could barely make out the coastline and beach, which was more pronounced at the south end. Looking east, he could vaguely make out the shapes that must have been communities in Hill Valley, and to the south he could see the skyscrapers of Dimmsdale and Brightsburg. Nearby was the newly finished MaxiMiniMall where Dimmsdale Flats had once stood. The sights were both breathtaking and beautiful, but they couldn't begin to fill the hole in his heart…

_Dad.._

Marty finished untying the tarp and strode over to the young superhero that only he could help. "Danny."

"Amazing view," Danny said diverting the issue, not wanting to hear what he assumed Marty had to say.

"Yeah. Wa-hoa! What happened to the ruins of Dimmsdale Flats?

**A few feet away…**

By this time Timmy had gotten out of the car and tried to listen in on Marty and Danny's conversation. The younger one--the Phatnom-- was commenting on the gorgeous view.

"Heh," said Danny, "my.. uh.. friend Sam was up in arms a few years back when she heard that some idiot hack sold the deed to the town for 8 dollars. She said it was something about preserving our heritage…"

"HEY! My idiot dad is not a hack!" Timmy yelled, forgetting that they couldn't hear him and that that was a good thing. Wanda was snickering. "What's a hack," he asked his fairies? They just shrugged.

Marty and Danny walked over to the tarp and Marty pulled it off revealing…

…Sleek angular metal. Rope seatbelts. Evidence of a hover conversion. And a black and sliver front tag that aptly read

_Screaming Metal Deathtrap…_

…a Collins Motor Corporation 1958 red Striker Z!

"What do you think?" Marty asked?"

"Wha? You built a TIME MACHINE… Out of a **_STRIKER Z!_**" said Danny. "I thought these things were dangerous!"

"They were. This one has been, as your generation would say, 'Pimped.'… CD player, hover conversion, new airbags. It will get us up to 88 at least. I started on it a few weeks ago. I guess I… or Jennifer.. finished it. Jennifer is my wife, by the way.."

"Anyway. It is 'vintage Shiz-nit'," Marty said, making quotation marks with his fingers. "From the Vincent days, back before that hack Maxwell inherited Collins Corp."

Danny just rolled his eyes.

**Back in Amity Park…**

Backed into a corner by Big Ben's Pizza, Maddie and Jazz, along with several people with them, were waiting impatiently for their collective doom as a horde of Ghost Soldiers approached.. Then something occurred to Maddie. She opened the fourth compartment from the left on her belt and removed a pill, and dropped it in a shallow puddle. It exploded out into a foam case. And in that foam case was her own personal super-weapon.

It was a submachine gun constructed in utmost secrecy. Not even Jack had known about it. Any ghost who felt its fire would be in an Other World of pain.

Aptly she called the weapon the Amityville Horror.

She assembled the stock and inserted the clip… And stood up. Only to dive back down as a ectoplasmic bullet whizzed by. Jazz tossed her last grenade and Maddie used the cover to leap up and unload. The gun had a powerful recoil, and a stream of small blue projectiles based off the same technology in the ghost peeler lanced out, tearing the ghost soldiers to shreds. A satisfied smile played across Maddie's face. She opened fire on the second wave, and rushed forward fireing.

"GET OUT OF MY TOWN YOU FREAKS! EAT HOT LEAD!" Maddie yelled, ignoring the fact that the projectiles in her gun weren't really even solid, let alone lead. As the ghosts exploded left and right, Jazz noticed a new sound. It sounded like a helicopter...

A group of men, military types by the look of them jumped off the helecopter with some really high-tech looking weaponry. And they had a Green Lanter, John Stewart himself, with them.

"You've done enough. Get out of here," he said to Maddie, breathing heavily from the carnage she'd just dished out. A ghost that seemed to be made of spare parts knocked over the Big Ben mock up that served as the Pizzeria's sign.

"I am Technus! Master of technology and stylish extablishing shots! The fourth wall will crumble before my massive digital might!"

Green Lantern smirked, cracked his knuckles, and went at it, as the civilians got on the helicopter that was to take them to saftey. Hopefully.


	7. Of Paradoxes and Rock Legends

**Writer's Note**: Thank you all for the positive reviews! I can't tell you how much I appreciate them. And to answer the question of a recent review, no, I have no idea where to find or watch the BttF cartoon. I wish I did.

**Somewhere over a dessert in California...**

The dynamic duo of guys who have at one point or another in their lives been voiced by David Kaufman, Marty McFly and Danny Fenton, got in the hover-converted '58 Striker Z. It was confortable, and very much heavier than a delorean. It took more than normal unleaded for it to fly, let alone travel through time. Thankfully, all that--the Time machine components and the Mr. Fusion--was in the roomy trunk, clearing the back seet for supplies or passengers. Convenient for occasions on which Jules and Verne got board of the ninties, Marty thought. Indeed, there was ample evidence of actual _use _of this Time Machine (hereafter reffered to as the TMZ)...

Toys, strewn about on the floorboard. A pile of CDs and Casset tapes in the back. A typical teenager, Danny started going through them.

_The Beatles_

_The Eagles_

Skynyrd

_  
_Then one caught Danny's eye... _In Loving Memory: Ember McLean... March 15, 1968 - October 23, 1985_

No, not Ember McLean. _Amber _Mclean. But there was a burning blue "E" emblazened behind the name of the tape, and natural brain mechanics could easily confuse such things. Danny checked the back of the tape for a tracklist, and realized the folly of that; casset tapes weren't separated into sperate tracks. Thank God for Compact Discs!

Instead, there was an eulogy. '_For the angel who couldn't rise above the pain and brought it to an end, we love you, Ember... always'_

Danny felt his spine shivver, but for some reason he would never be able to explain, he pocketed the tape and tried to shrug it off.

Marty sat there considering what he should say. Should he tell Danny that it was ultimately his fault--that either through his career as a musician or through Docs patronage of future businesses, that history changed and his father died. Marty didn't know what to do. I just knew how he felt. The same way he felt when he realized that it was his idea to use the Grey's Sports Almanac from the future to bet at gambling and that Biff had over heard and given the book to a sixty-year-younger version of himself. It was a mixture of guilt and anger.

Yeah, it was Doc's invention and Marty's misuse of it that opened the door. But after all, Vlad was the one who had gone through. So mentally absolving him of any guilt in the matter, Marty pulled the Striker Z time machine into the air off its perch in the Californian desert, and headed for Dimmsdale. Why? Because that is where Danny told him he wanted to go:

_Hill Valley, California, Tuesday Ocober 15, 1985._

Hidden in the back seat, invisible and inaudible to all but his fairies, Timmy sat and thought. Then he saw Marty punch in the date. _Oct 15 1985 7:00AM..._

"It just occurred to me that being in the past is gonna stink!" Timmy told his godparents. "I'd rather see what cool awesome high tech fun I can have in the future!"

"Nothing has ever occurred to me!" Cosmo said, blissfully stupid.

Timmy ignored him. "Wanda, you can't _make _or _fix _time machines, right?"

"Sorry sport," Wanda said, "Jorgen wasn't born last century, you know. You can't get by with loop-holes on his watch. What do you think he is? A Pixie?"

"What about _reprogramming _this time machine?" Timmy asked.

Wanda took a gander at the new Time Travel rules. "You're good," she said to Timmy with an evil smile of approval.

"I wish we were going at least 10 years into the future!" Timmy yelled as he always did when wishing. It was a wonder that Cosmo and Wanda weren't deaf yet.

The fairies poofed the destination time display to 4-3-15... _Why April third? Figure it out yourself! Hm.. What is in this meat? It must be a mystery! But I digress._

**Hill Valley, California, Tuesday Ocober 15, 1985 7:02 AM**

Unfortunately, Timmy's faries were about half a second too late, as there was a series of giant fashes that filled the winshield faded right before the display changed. Marty was too busy driving and Danny too busy reacting to notice the change. This incarnation of the Flux Capacitor had been designed to avoid discharging again for at least a minute, so Marty had ample time to turn the time circuits off and still not notice the change without losing momentum. He pulled the car down into the streets of Hill Valey, towards Hill Valey university to be exact... Where at some point on this very day, Vlad Masters would get blasted with a prototype Fenton portal and comedown with a terrible case of Ecto Acne. And ghost powers.The ance was probably a result of it being prototype. Danny got his entire body blasted and suffered no adverse physical affects.

Marty got a little teary-eyed as they flew over his hometown from ten years in his own past.It would only be in ten and one-half short days that his 17-year-old self embarcked on the adventure of a lifetime. The only thing that gave him no pleasure was the Essex porn store. Married life with Jennifer had given him a distaste for such things. And he secretly held hope that in the timeline he finally ended up experiencing, the Web would never be invented, because as sure as Hell Valley, he didn't want the job of policing his kids' E-Activities.

**Amity Park, January, 2005**

On their way out of town, Maddie had convinced the helecopter pilot to stop at Fentonworks so Maddie could get some stuff out of the house before they left. The ghost shield was still holding when they got there, so obtaining the technology was no dificult task. The hard part was what Maddie had to do next.

"Mom," Jazz said, her eyes grave. "Dad would understand. He wouldn't want it stuff to fall into their hands."

Her daughter was right. She had to destroy it. She had to destroy the Fenton Portal. It would only be a matter of time before the ghosts broke in. All they had to do was kill the power and the shield would come down. She aimed the RPG the pilot had spared her and fired it into the crevace that housed the portal's sensitve parts and fragile compoents.

**BOOM**. And that was that.

The Fenton Ghost catcher sat in the corner. Niether Jack nor Maddie had used it since they had the Ghost Flu. And Maddie realized it could be usefull, so she had Jazz help her dissasemble it and pack it up. With all the data backed up and all the gadgets they couldn't carry packed up, Maddie said goodbye to her home. Where her son was, she didn't know. She just hoped he was allright...

"Let's go, Jazz."

A few minutes later, the Chinnook was over the Colorado Rockies. According to the pilot, the President had declared a state of emergency. Amity Park wasn't the only city attacked. The government had set up a system of safe-houses to contain the refugees of the attacks, and that would have to do for now, unless they could pay for some nice hotel. Jazz scooted across the Chinook's bench and sat next to her mother...

"Mom," she said, weakly, her voice almost breaking, "There is something I have to tell you." Maddie thought she knew what it was...

"The ghost boy. The Phantom who saved the town from all those bad ghosts..."

Silence hung in the air for a few seconds...

"It's Danny," she said, embracing her mom and beginning to cry.

"I know," Maddie said. "I know." It wasn't hard to figure out, really. He was never seen the same time as the ghost kid. The thermos and other ghost gadgets Jack gave Danny always mysteriously ended up in his hands. Danny's coma after the battle with the fire demon that had destroyed the town. And them both being gone when Amity Park needed the Phantom most. That took Maddie from suspicion, to _knowing._

"I'm so worried! Where did he go?" Jazz sobbed.

"I don't know, honey," she tried to comfort her distraught daughter. "But I don't think he'd go down without a fight."

**Hill Valley, California, Tuesday Ocober 15, 1985 8:35 AM**

It was an hour and a half later when Danny and Marty started wondering through the halls of HVU, looking for the laboratory. They passed a gym and adjoining locker rooms, history, foreign language, art, computer science (which amounted to a giant vector generator in this where and when)...

Then there was hope. A door labled Biology Lab. They were getting close. Soon they found a side door that was barely visible from the main hallway, and it was labled "Paranormal Research"...

And obvioulsy the eighties version the scientific community reguarded such studies as ludicrous as they did in the new Millenium, as the room was baren as could be. But there was no mistaking what that was on the far end of the room, sitting on a table. Marty and Danny ran over to the tiny Fenton Portal prototype to examine it. Despite being 20 years in the past, Jack Fenton's craftmansship was evident: the rim around the back of the portal: The word FENTON was painted on in big careful letters, while _Masters _was written on hastily and with a sharpee.

Did they even have sharpees in the eighties? Excuse me if that's an anachronism.

Just then, Jack, Maddie and A young man that could have been Vlad, but without the evil aura or the silver hair. After some boring techno-talk that only Tucker could have translated, both Vlad and Maddie insisted that Jack's calculations were incorrect. Marty and Danny had been hiding in the corner, inivisible thanks to Danny's talents.

Suddenly, Marty recognizes the two men, and with a suprisingly strong jerk, pulls Danny with him out the wall behind. Vlad gets blasted, and the portal breifly dissapears into it's own vortext ( P) for a few seconds. When it's over, nothing has changed. History will repeat itself.

"WHAT WAS THAT FOR?" Danny screamed at Marty! Then he slugged him, knocking him stagering into a trash can, where he lost balance and fell. Suddenly he got his rage undercontrol and calmed himself. "I'm sorry I hit you. But why did you stop me?"

"Think about it, kid," Marty said. "If you stopped him from getting blasted, then we would never have been here. And that would cause a paradox."

"I thought you said history could be chagned!" Danny yelled back.

"Fine. I lied about the paradox thing. The fact of the matter is that you have no idea what doing that could have chagned."

"My dad would still be alive, for one," Danny shot back with acid in his voice.

"But if I'm not mistaken, that was Vlad Masters, and his wealth has shaped the economy of the US for almost 20 years by the time you get those powers. He makes Bill Gates and Edwin Alva look like homeless boys. Vlad-Co could go toe-to-toe with Microsoft or CollinsCorp. That kind of concentrations of wealth being absent would drastically alter the future. What if he'd gotten drunk and gotten your dad killed? What if his influence caused Jack to give up on ghost hunting and you'd never gotten your powers. Manipulating things like that is like attempting a school shooting at the Xavier Mutant Academy. You just don't do it."

"Fine," Danny said. And the two left.

As they went, they passed the Musical Studies bulding. Danny thought he heard a Linkin Park song, but he guessed he must have just been hearing things as he went in to the sounds of "The Power of Love" instead. And then gaped to see Marty on stage! Only he was younger. He glanced at '95 Marty who just shrugged.

"I thought we played this concert on a Wednesday. My mistake."

Then, who must have been Jennifer walked up and greeted '85 Marty. Both McFlys blushed. Danny turned to go, giving Marty a friendly elbow. Then the next song came on and chills ran up his spine so fast he could have jumped out of his skin.

The opening drum beat to _Remember. _The brainwashing song of ghost punk-rocker Ember McLean...

"Whoa, Danny. You look like you've seen a ghost," Marty joked...

"ShHH!" Danny waved Marty aside and ran back in. The audience was having mixed reactions to the drumbeat and guitar strums. Then she began singing, and the croud erupted. Half were booing the girl off the stage. The other half were chanting.

_We love you Ember!_


	8. Remember

**Author's Note**: _Remember the author's note on Chapter One where I said this was my first fanfic? Yeah, I made a bunch of mistakes with this story. One of those mistakes was losing a significant scene to the netherverse of the internet, in which Danny learns that Amber McLean is so miserable in part because Penelope Spectra is her guidance counselor. I have no idea where that scene went, and I don't remember how exactly it happened. So yeah, what you're about to read doesn't follow from the previous chapter. Suffice it to say, Spectra is about to attack Danny because, as always, Danny wants to do the right thing, even if it means changing history._

_

* * *

_**Hill Valey, California, October 13, 1985**

Spectra's claws went up to come down on Danny's head. They seemed to elongate as she raised her arm for the deathblow, and Danny would never know if that was just his perception or they actually did become more menacing. He couldn't move, he couldn't turn intangible. All he could do was...

**_..."GET DOWN!" _**yelled a voice from right behind him. Danny obeyed, almost subconsciously falling, letting gravity take hold and not caring how much it hurt. He'd suffered worse. Much worse.

**_"MAKANKOSAPPO!" _**Flare yelled with all his might. He extended his palm and a drilling corkscrew of fire lanced out and slammed right into Spectra's black face. She when flying backwards, riding the long beam. "Go," Flare yelled at Danny. "Get your thermos-thing and lock her up!"

"Right." Suddenly rejuvenated by the ectodrenaline a ghost flame passing two feet over him generated, Danny took off for the cansiter, which Spectra had just passed over. (The whole battle since Danny used the Soul Reaver has taken place in a straight line over about fifty yards.) Last time he had his flight speed clocked, Sam registered it at 112 Miles Per Hour. But with Danny's experience since then, he was sure he was breaking 120 as he flew towards the Fenton Thermos. Reaching down with his hand, he scooped it up, flying not a foot below Flare's fire beam.

Now the hard part: catching Spectra before she recovered. Danny floored it as he made much ghostly haste to catch up with Spectra. He passed centimeters under the spiked boots her current form wore, and kept it up as hard as he needed to, firing the Thermos in front of her. The ghostly shrink slammed into the blue wave and was pulled into the thermos, this time with her youth intact. Then Danny lost all control and black out as he slamed into the ground at at least 80 MPH and bounced 20 or more feet before skidding to a halt. His ghost form deactivated itself...

"That guy ROCKS!" Timmy said, observing the fight through binoculars from a nearby Redwood. The entire battle from the time

"And he fights," Cosmo said, still oblivous. Wanda gave him a glare. "Well. He does.."

"Wanda. Can you heal that guy? The Pinhead isn't going to leave without him as much as he hates changing the past..."

"Sure thing, Sport," Wanda said. A puff of purple smoke with the word "BandAid" in the middle appeared over the Phantom Kid, and he sat up, seemingly confused. Not that Timmy actually knew what _seemingly_ meant.

**At the College Campus**

"Tell your sister I said 'Hi' for me," Biff Tannen said as he and his son walked away from 1995's Marty. "If you ever come near my son again, we're gonna press charges! Ya' Butthead!"

"Yeesh," Marty sighed. Appearantly his dad KO'ing Biff in one punch had earned respect for the McFly side of the family only. If Biff thought Marty was a Baines, then he was still fair game, Marty supposed. Marty decided he would never understand the id of the Tannen family. Especially the part that thought calling someone a butthead was a terribly stinging insult.

Thankfully, there had been witnesses who vouched that Cliff had provoked the fight, Marty had been able to walk away with just a warning from the police. He was just thankful he had a fake ID under the name "Joey Baines", among others like Calvin Kline and Clint Eastwood, made for time traveling emergencies. But since Joey was currently in prison, he might want to get that changed to another of his uncles. Meh. He wasn't going to be in this era for much longer anyway...

**At Eastwood Ravine**

Danny opened his eyes. _Why am I not half dead. Wait. I am _**always** _half dead... I mean.. Why am I awake? _His thoughts after those were a bit muddled. But otherwise he felt fine as he sat up. A blue gust escaped from his mouth and he stood up to see Flare standing by him. Danny was surprised that he had the capacity to go ghost, and found that the Thermos was still with that form. How he'd managed to hold on to it through that ordeal, he had no idea...

"Righteous job, man," Flare yelled as he approached Danny.

"Makanko? What'sit? Where in the Hill did that come from?" Danny asked

"You said to think Japanese so I did. Makankosappo is basically _Screw Beam of the Devil.. _And since it was a drilling beam of fire, I thought.. you know.."

"You know Japanese." Danny more stated than asked.

"I _am_ Japanese," Flare replied, looking directly at Danny for the first time. Indeed, Danny now noticed beyond his transparent and pale skin, Flare was indeed ethnically Japanese. Flare wore faded grey ecto-jeans and a red ecto-denim shirt with big sleeves and a stylized **_F_** on it. Under his shirt he wore a black shirt that was probably ecto-cotton, and a crooked belt of ecto-felt was tied over the whole thing. Flare's hair looked like fire. It was oranges and reds mixed with bright spots of yellow and off-white. It stood up in spikes, similar to Yamucha-sama's from Dragon Ball Z before he let it grow back out during the android saga. And why Danny was watching Dragon Ball Z in a universe that showed Maho-Mushi? Heck, even he didn't have the answer. Maybe he watched them both. After all, the idea for Soul Reaver did come from Maho-Mushi..

"Right." Danny laughed. All his observations, of course, only took a second or two in real time.

Just then, Amber darted in. _That was unexpected, _Danny thought!

"OMIGOSH! THAT WAS AMAZING!" Amber yelled in Danny's face! "You're like some-kind of super hero or something! Who are you!"

She was leaning way too close for Danny's comfort too. But at least she looked happy... But that might not be a good thing...

**Paradox Warning Alarm!...**

Then she kissed him...

Time seemed to freeze. Danny didn't know what to do. His head warned him of paradox... But his heart couln't bare to hurt her again...

"Amber, we can't do this. I am not who you want me to be..." But she just kissed him harder. _She's so desperate, _Danny thought.

Amber backed away. "You want this..."

"No." Danny replied. I'm.. I'm from the future...

"You expect me to believe that?" She said. Her eyes were almost glossed over with tears. Yet another rejection... NO! It woudln't happen. This guy was her hero... her savior!

"Ember!" Danny pushed her away.

"Say my name!" Her right eye twitched in classic Hartman style as she grabbed Danny again.

"You don't get it, Amber! In the future, we are _enemies! _You tried to _kill me _and my _best friend!" _Danny couldn't tell if the expression on her face was horror or anger. But he didn't like it.

Danny didn't know what to do. But then, something happened. He felt dizzy and pushed Amber away again as he collapsed to his knees. He held up his hand and goggled in horror as he realized it was phasing out. But he felt as he pushed her away it made it worse. His hand instinctively went to the tape in his pocket. He pulled it out. And it no longer was a memorial, but just a tape. The kind bought in a store. And the eulogy on the back...

_Was fading _back _in._

In his pocket, it had changed. And when he pushed her away, it had become something worse... So he raised his hand up. And Amber took it. Suddenly, the pain vanished and he stopped phasing out. _This can't be happening. Either I comfort her or she does something terrible to me and Sam._ So Danny let her kiss him again. He just wished he had more time... And a plan.

_**Outside the College**_

Marty suddenly felt better. He got back up. He suddenly became aware of why he had fallen over. It was something he'd felt before and something he'd never wanted to experience again. But he just had. Phasing out of existence. Of becoming a living paradox. The ice that had run through his body and consumed his hand on that stage in that gym was indesicribible. The existense of the entire universe depended on his parents getting together, and only his father's last minute decison had saved him... Saved everyone.

"Marty," he mouthed. "What have you done?"

_**Hiding in the Foliage**_

"What was that?" Timmy gaped, sitting up. "It felt like my legs were just dipped in liquid nitrogen..."

_**The Ravine**_

The kiss ended and Amber stepped back. "This isn't right," she said at lenght, hurt but not crushed. "But I needed it all the same. Thank you..."

Then she ran away. Danny looked down at the tape again. The date of death had changed one last time. December 22, 1985. Another month and twenty days, Danny realized. That was how long such a simple action as dropping one's defenses had given her. How a girl so tormented could seem so kind and then turn out so evil was beyond Danny's comprehension now. Perhaps it was simply as it seemed. She spent her entire short life searching for someone to approve of her. To not believe rumors and call her terrible things. To esteem her as an equal, not trample her like a doormat. And when she couldn't find that in her life she killed herself. And was still seeking it in death.

_Only now she has music that can brainwash her into people worshiping her. _It almost scared Danny, really. She got more powerful when they chanted her name. She derived _power _from the 'approval' of others. Even if the approval was entirely artifical, and she knew it. There was a lesson in there somewhere, Danny thought.

"So. See you in the future?" Danny asked Flare.

"Maybe." Flare said. And then he faded out.

**And...**

Marty showed up about that time, finally away from the cops and the Tannens. He swore to himself that if he ever met another member of the Tannen family anywhen other than his own current year, he would destroy the time machine outright as soon as he got back home.

"What happened?" Marty asked Danny as he approched the teenager.

"Amber came. She thought... She thought that I.. was her hero. That I could save her from her misery."

"**_What happened!" _**Marty repeated.

"She..." Danny sighed. "Never mind. It's over. The timeline is set right. We have to get out of this crazy decade before I get us all killed. Or worse, I go insane."

Then it occured to Danny that he had two very angry dead phsychologists in his thermos. "But first, we have to go back by the Paranormal Lab."

What!"

"I have to dump these two into the ghost zone. If I don't, they'll keep causing trouble here."

"Then just take 'em with us!"

"Uh. That would cause a major paradox. Geez I thought _you_ were the time-travel expert here."

"Right. Ok.. This is heavy."

"Trust me. If I know my dad, his "Incorrect calculations" were something a braindead Keanu Reaves could figure out."

"Keanu who?" Marty asked.

Danny just sighed again.

_**Hill Valley University**_

"I knew Masters and Fenton were slackers," Dean Harvey Strickland said has he left the barren-but-still-somehow-messy computer lab"But for Maddie Fisher to be hanging out with those two? Such a brilliant young mind gone to waste."

"Geez, doesn't anyone in Strickland's family have hair," Marty joke as they went to examine the notes on which Jack had made the calculations. The accident earlier had meant that the lab was off limits for anyone, but that wasn't a problem for Danny and his intangibility.

Marty scanned the documents and found they were way out of his league. Then Danny looked at them...

"THIS IS UNBELIEVE ABLE!" Danny yelled. Most of the calculations were advanced Calculus that Danny had no idea how to work. But There was a blatantly obvious mistake right in the middle of the page. In a simple arithmetic problem, Jack had forgotten to carry a 2. "He blasted Vlad in the face, thereby creating my arch nemisis by forgetting to carry a two?"

Danny skimmed through several other papers worth of calculations until he found one that wasn't math. It was... A grocery list... He turned it over and wrote on the back, working the arithmetic, this time carrying the 2. Then he plugged the new answer into the original equations.. (and thanked God he had a caclulator on his otherwise usless cell phone) and got the answers he needed...

"Ok, Marty. You won't believe this. Set the motor to run at 88 RPMs, and dial the wattage down to 1.21 kilowatts."

"I don't believe this." Marty said has he made the adjustments. "Maybe those numbers are some sort of para-physical multi-unviersal constant. Otherwise it's just an incredible conincedence..."

Danny and Marty stood back as the young Fenton plugged in the prototype portal. There was a green ecto blast that shot out reminiscant of Stargate SG1, and then it became a stable portal. Danny beamed success, and then an annoying realization hit him.

"_What if they remember me?"_

Suddenly, as if on cue, a puff of purple smoke with words in it appeared over the thermos.

_Totally Forgotten!_

"Um, Marty. Was there just a puff of smoke with the words _'Totaly Forgotten_' appearing over that thermos..."

"Um.. Yeah. I think so..."

"That was weird."

"Most definitely."

"You think it is some sort of good omen?"

"Do we have any other choice?"

Danny strode across the room. Suddenly another poof of smoke and a note appeared on the table where the grocery list had been. Danny read it. _YES, THEY HAVE FORGOTTEN IT!_

"Good enough for me." Danny sighed, blasting the duo of misery aborbers into the ghost zone.


	9. Letting Go of the Past

**Writer's Note: **_At last we get to go to the future. Honestly I'm sick and tired of the past, but I really wanted to write the stuff about Amber McLean. I've always hoped the show would go into stuff like what were these people like when they were alive to make them turn out Danny's Enemies after they were dead._

_But the meat of the action happens in the future, so that is where we must go now..._

**Somewhere Above Hill Valley**

Marty sat back as he and Danny (and the young stowaway they didn't know about) were riding high above the lazy California town where Marty had been raised.

"So. When to?" Marty asked Danny. In the present they couldn't beat Vlad, and changing the past could result in disaster.

It was a question Danny was still pondering when Marty enaged the Time Circuits and saw the date that Timmy's godparents had told it to go to. April 3, 2015...

"How did that date get punched in?" Marty asked no body in particular.

"I have absolutely no idea." Danny replied. Danny didn't know about the time machine enough for a random date to concern him. It did occur to him that April Third was the aniversary of the date he'd first fought the ectopusses Vlad had sent to test his father. That Sunday Sam and Tucker had been over while his dad had lectured him about ghosts and eating horse meat... He'd had a problem with that...

But now, he'd never get another paternal lecture. He'd never again here his father exclaim "Suffering Spooks!" or accidently drink backwash again. Not that he particularly cared for that taste but... His dad...

"Take me to the distant past," Danny told Marty."I can train. For years if I have to. Then I'll come back and beat Vlad."

"Hey! You think I want to spend years in the past! I have a wife! I'm expecting a daughter... in three years..."

"Then leave me and come back."

"There is no way I'm leaving you alone in the past!" Marty reached to delete the time and change it to something.

**In the back seat...**

"NO!" Timmy yelled. "I wish that nothing could prevent us from going to the future!" Timmy yelled. The Fairies didn't even bother to check the rules. They didn't even use magic. In fact, Wanda did nothing at all.

"Take that!" Cosmo said, throwing Timmy's GameBuddy at the time-cicuit with suprising strenght.

"Where did that come from Cosmo?" his wife asked?

"I've been playing catch with snowball!" Cosmo yelled, reffering to his infamous three-headed fire-breathing hydra that had once fried Jorgen and once burned the set of "This is Your Wish" to ashes. Bill CrystalBall had threatened to sue, until he realized that Cosmo was bankrupt and that Fairy Mason only took human clients. Which was very convenient for Cosmo.

**Up front of the Striker Z**

"What the!" Marty yelled as the input device on the time circuit control suddenly shattered and broke off.

"Maybe it's another omen, like that smoke cloud that appeared over my thermos." Suddenly Danny realized that he had released the Box Ghost with Spectra and Bertrand. But there was nothing he could do about that now. He just hoped that, if Time Cop was right, that the two Box Ghost selves didn't get anywhere near each-other.

"We're going to the future, then," Marty said. Danny goggled. At first he didn't believe Marty was serous, but he was. Marty floored it.

78

80

83

86

88!

**BOOM-boom-BOOM! **With a tripple sonic-boom and a trail of fire, the Striker Z vanished into the future.

The fields below auburn with the harvest suddenly became the green of spring. The sky went from sunset to early morning. Indeed, Hill County seemed to be alive with life even in the supposedly dark Future marty was trying to prevent. But to the north...

Dark clouds seemed to hang over. As cliche' as it seemed, the atmosphere itself seemed to absorb the evil. Or perhaps so much smoke from what Vlad-possesed Valerie had burned had risen that the sky was permanently stained with ash. Whatever the case, Danny dreaded going near it.

"We'll need our rest," Mary sighed. "I'll see if we can crash at my place."

"If you say so." Danny said...

The house they found was prettty much empty. The power was out, but the plumbing still worked. Things had been packed up, so Marty had assumed that Jennifer and the kids--and perhaps himself, depending on what exactly the timeline had extrapolated--had gotten out of town and headed south when the ghost army had taken over the northern US. After Amity Park, Marty recalled from Doc's briefing, Green Bay had been the first city to fall.

Danny had found several economy beds in a back room, along with a box full of news papers. Some of the headlines were telling, and they managed to let the extent of the tragedy sink in.

_Superhero Massacre_

_President Delcares National State of Emergency_

_Green Lanter Killed in Action_

_Green Bay Falls to Spectral Onslaught_

On and on. Headlines of distaster. But these seemed so far-removed from the tranquility of this house. It seemed that SoCal wasn't affected by the army. How Vlad managed to control such an army and not have them rebel was beyond Danny as well. Then he found a newspaper. It was dated September 9, 2008.

_Ghosts and Metahumans Reach Unstable Truce; Expansionism of Valorian Empire slowed to a Crawl_

The story went on to detail what had happened. After three years of war, a shaky ceasation of hostilites had developed. Vlad controlled an area stretch out from Green Bay as far north as Quebec and as far south as Metropolis. Seattle had been the farthest target west, and Liberty City had fallen in the East. Of America's greatest cities, only Las Angeles, New York, Atlanta, Jump City, and Gotham remained unscathed by the attacks. But the attacks had also weakend the US to the point of collapse, and the federal government had to do something it was never prepared to do before:

Become efficient.

_But what of survivors? _Danny thought.

Marty came in carrying a box. Full of yet _more_ news papers.They were all USA Today, Hill Valey eddition. And he dropped one at Danny's lap.

Danny gasped. _Superman Killed!_

**Paramilitary Compound, Colorado**

Maddie leaned back in her chair and sighed. Another day, more bad news. She watched the recording of Superman's final minutes over and over. He had been confronted on his way back from a covert mission by a Spanish-speaking ghost who'd called himself "El Matador." That term ususally was applied to bull fighters, but literally it meant _The Killer._ Against this ghost, Superman had been pretty much powerless, as super strenght will only get you so far when you target can phase intangible.

Maddie was working on a device that could make ghosts solid objects, but she was missing something important. She knew Jack could have done it. But he'd been dead for more than 10 years. And every day, her operation was looking more and more hopeless.

"One more time, Gyzz?" Maddie addressed the green-clad teenager next to him. Despite a reportedly checkered past, Gyzz had become quite the operations expert in Tucker Foley's absence. He was said to be a genius, and Maddie didn't doubt it. Maddie watched the clip again, in the dark AV chamber on a small moniter. Superman had been possesed by the ghost, who then used Superman's body to fight his way to a no-longer-secret government facility where kryptonite was stored. Exposure to even a small amounth could easily kill Kal El, but an entire vault full of the stuff? He had litterally exploded from all the energy escaping so fast.

Maddie coudln't explain why she kept watching it. Something to do, perhaps? On the video, the over-shadowed Superman dashed downward, slamming his fist through an M1-AX tank, detonation the shells inside. Then he backflipped off the tank and landed on an armored Humvee, shattering it, and using his heat vision to ignite the fuel. He'd flown out of the explosion into the building with the kryptonite vault, which had no cameras. Then there was another explosion and face filled the screen...

_No. This is ridiculous. Now I'm seeing things, I've watched it so much._But Gyzz played it back of his own volition, frame by frame...

He'd. Seen. It. Too.

And sure enough, there was some sort of being--the ghost?--coming out of the inferno Superman's self-detonation had caused. And it had screwed up and passed to close to a camera. It was only there for two frames, and then gone, but even with those images Maddie recognized it. The same ghost that had stolen her from their Ghost Assault Vehicle 11 years prior. Who her husband had defeated in a contest of wills.

Whom _Danny _had defeated, in her husbands body, she reminded herself.

"What do you make of that? Is that _El Matador?"_ Gyzz asked. "That snot-head is gonna pay if I ever..." he was getting worked up.

"Gyzz." Maddie tried to calm him. She needed say nothing more...

And now, everything made sense. The war. The ghost invasion. Why Jack was singled out for murder, beyond his ghost-hunting reputation. It was revenge. Revenge... It was said that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. And Sizzle had been living proof of that. But what of a man? Maddie had rejected him. And he'd dealt such a blow to the world in retallaiton. Maddie almost cried at the bitter irony; all this because of that accident thirty years ago. All because Jack had forgotten to carry that darned 2!

Maddie rose to do what needed to be done. "Tell Dora and Paulina to review the video when they get back, Gyzz. I need to go talk to Sam. Keep all of us on alert, too. If _anything _at all comes this way, I want to know yesterday."

She didn't know why she'd given those orders. Those things were Gyzz's job and he'd always done them well. But she had some feeling inside her that she couldn't explain. A mixture of dread and hope. She didn't know which side of the feeling to trust, but she was anticipating something..

Big. Bigger than Superman's murder. Perhaps it would be the turning point. Maybe the truce would end and the pendulum would finally swing one way or another. Only time would tell. She had gotten to the door when a transmission alarm buzzed. Any activity coming from the Amity Park area was heavily monitered. She didn't know why, but Gyzz always monitered the ruined city without question. Too bad he was only on night shift.

"What is it?"

"It is some sort of message, I think." Gyzz said. "It says it is from a Doctor Emmet Brown."

**Above Amity Park Ruins, April 4, 2015**

Danny was deeply saddened by what he saw. Shock and horror were long gone. This wasn't the first time his town had been wrecked. But now, he had to find someone very specific, and Amity Park was the only place he could think to start his search... Only one person knew the location what he needed.

The car landed around town hall. The whole area was gutted and blackened by fires and warfare. But any semblance of normal life had long since dissapeared. If anyone still lived here at all, Danny would be surprised. He passed by the sign that had once welcomed newcomers. Where as before it had said "Amity Park, A nice Place To Live"...

A _CAL _had been painted in front of the 'Amity' and the sign had been mangled with a sawed off shot gun, so that the sign now simply read: _Calamity Park. A place. _That was all it was anymore. Not a city or anyones home. Just a place. So tracking down the one ghost Danny wanted to find might not be easy. Then agian, it might be cake. Either way, it was stll the easy part of his plan.

_**(Imagine this scene to the Sounds of Greenday's Boulevard of Broken Dreams. Who doesn't know that song by now?)**_

Johnny 13 rounded the corner. Ever since Danny Phantom had dissapeared, the city had literally become a ghost town. Ghosts.. Not lived, but existed here. And with Kitty gone, Johnny was alone in the worlds.

Johnny found the place he'd been looking for. It was where Fentonworks had once stood. The place where he had first set foot on Eath since he'd died in that kludge-mucking bike race. He glanced down at his "Bad Luck Shadow" and shook his head. He would find nothing here. The bulding was gutted. This entire trip was pointless.

Johnny thought he heard a noise behind them, and looked at his only protection. "Shadow, stay alert," he whispered.

He found where he'd parked his bike. Before Kitty would have acompanied him. Now thanks to Vlad... How he hated the monster! Kitty was gone, and nothing could change that.

He himself wasn't really alive, per se'... But at least he still existed.

Suddenly, he heard a noise again. Perhaps someone was tracking him.

"Who's there!" he turned around and demanded. Shadow was clearly itching for a fight, so much that he had situated himself in a discontinuous position realitive to the light. It looked like an early PS2 game's shadowing. It wouldn't fool anybody. But it didn't have to, because shadow was quick and lethal. If his pursuer was alive.

But then the one peson who he'd least expected stepped out of the shadow.

"Hello, Johnny." Danny said.

"Phanom." Johnny's voice was acidic.

Johnny's eyes lit up with rage. "Shadow! Have some fun with him." Shaddow was more than ready for some revenge, albeit for different reasons than Johnny.

The black shade lashed up from the ground at Johny's feet and rushed at Danny. But the Phantom Kid remained calm. "KameHameHa!" he said, quite awkwardly.

"Oh come on, Chaltab!" Danny yelled at the sky as the bright light evaporated Shadow. "'Kamehameha?' Now you've gotten _me _quoting DBZ attacks too? Do I _look _like a Physics Police officer to you?"

"Heh. Dragonball..." Johhny chuckled...

"What was that?" Danny asked.

"Uhh... I... Uh... YOU MUST BE DRAGGIN'.. a lot of ba--"

"--**_Please don't say it!"_** Danny cut him off. "That was the lamest attempt to not look like a geek... **ever**."

Johnny's face twisted in rage. "You must have a lot of guts showing up here after you dissapeared! And now Kitty's.. Gone! You... You could have done something Mr. Superhero! You should have stopped that madman Plasmius! I blame this all on you! You coward! Get out of my sight"

Danny was suddenly stung hard. He wanted to say something sarcastic, like "Oh yeah. You're _really _in a position to be giving _me _commands!"...

But instead what came out was, "I'm sorry."

Johnny looked up at him.

"I'd have died too, though. There was nothing I could have done in the past. But I'm going to make it right now..."

"So why have you come to me?"

"Johnny. I think you know what I want.""What makes you think I still have _that_?"

"Because as long as you have it, you have leverage agaisnt me." The ghost boy had a point...

**And for more about the Physics Police, go read Bobcat's hilarious fic The Ballad of the Physics Police.**

**www(dot)fanfiction(dot)net/s/475172/1/**


	10. State of Emergency

**Calamity Park, Valeria**

Danny and Marty, in the Striker Z, flew over the landscape of the destroyed town, following Johnny. He lead them to a familiar sight with unfamiliar landscaping. As far as the eye could see, every moving being was a ghost. As the two landed, Danny maintained his human form to avoid revenge or autograph seekers. Strangely, he encountered some humans living among the ghosts. He guessed that since ghosts didn't have to eat, they could tolerate humans staying with them. Or maybe things had gotten so bad they had no choice. According to Johnny, without the device he'd stolen from Jack's lab, the only way to get back into the ghost zone would be form him to selfdestruct like Ember's band had to avoid capture. This was unfortunately very painful. But still appearantly less painful than the Fenton Thermos.

"So, then she says, 'I am no man!' in the most melodramatic way possible and rams the sword through his face!" Danny told Marty, continuing their idle conversation.

"Sounds like an awesome trilogy," Marty replied.

"Hey Marty.." Danny said, seemingly serious. "I have something important to ask you."

Marty arched an eyebrow inquisitively.

"What in the name of all that is decent possesed you to name your band 'The Pinheads!'"

Marty would have facevaulted if it were possible. "How is that an important question?"

"I was joking."

"Right. I don't know. I just thought it was a good idea at the time. All the guys agreed. Maybe we were all stupid in the eighties. After all, we made He-man popular."

"Yeah. You definitely did that."

"Well. What would you call your band?"

Danny shruged. "I can't even play an instrument, let alone have a band."

"Ok Fine. Band, superhero group, shuffle board team... Whatever. If you had a group of like-minded individuals who did the same thngs you did what would you call it?"

"I don't know. Maybe something like _The Spectres _or _Ghost of a Chance._"

"You really are like your dad, man. Competely obsessed with ectoplasmic beings."

A head of them, Johnny signaled they were nearing the place. They stopped at the only building in the area that hadn't been completely gutted, Bucky's Music Mega Store. Marty stayed in the car, not wanting to get messed up in a bunch of ghosts. He'd seen what mess Luke Skywaker had gotten into when he'd gone into the cantina full of strange aliens. (It was still two years before the Special Editions came out for him, so he was savouring every moment of the original that he could, including the Wolf Man in the cantina.)

**Inside Bucky's**

"I hid it in the basement." Johnny told Danny. "After Vlad attacked, I mean. Nobody ever goes down there because that's where they keep the Insane Clown Posse music."

"Creative thinking," Danny said. He still didn't like Johnny, but they'd made a mutual truce sometime after Kitty had possessed Paulina to get close to Danny, all for the sake of making Johnny jealous.

"You really owe me one after this," Johnny told him.

"Excuse me? I owe you one? You're the one who tried to make my sister a prisoner in her own body!"

"Actually if she had stayed possessed by Kitty for more than a few hours she would have been forced out of her body."

Danny looked livid. "You realize that was exactly the wrong thing to say, right?"

"About two seconds after I said it," Johnny replied even as Danny's fist slammed into his face. "How did you hit me without Freaking Out first?"

"It's called going ghost. Freaking out was Freakazoid. Man I hated that show. Especially the voice of the main character." (If you got that one, you might be a nerd.)

"Right... but how you hit me?"

"Something I learned fighting Sizzle." Danny replied.

Then the found it. Under a table in the basement...Danny opened the oversized box.

And there it was. The Soul Shredder! The Soul Shredder was the blade the Fright Knight had wielded during his brief stay on Earth. It made whoever was cut by it experience their deepest most secret fears for enternity, or until the Fright Knight decided to let them out. Which he had to do if he was defeated. And the only way Danny could defeat an enemy so much more powerful than himself was to sheath his sword in a nearby Pumpkin. Hey. I told you the episode sucked.

**And if you're wondering why Johnny had it? Time for a flashback! Cue the wavy-screen effect!**  
**Amity Park, 3 months prior to Vlad's attack**

After a _un robo facil_-turned murder, the the sorceress and Teen Titans enemy named Jinx had showed up in Amity Park looking for the ghost of the unintentional victim. But rather than finding her, Jinx had gone mad with the power of a ghost-controlling amulet she had somehow aquired and used the amulet to control Kitty and Ember.

Try as he might, Danny could not get close enough to disable the bad-luck soceress. And it had only gotten worse when Jinx had instructed Kitty and Ember to over-shadow Paulina and Sam respectively. Danny could still fight them with the Ecto-Fist technique he'd ad-libbed during his fight with Sizzle. But he didn't have the same power that he'd had then, and he'd got his butt kicked.

Johnny, though, had been able to overshadow Jinx while Danny distracted her. It had been hard. It had almost seemed like Jinx knew what she was doing when it came to being possessed. But Johnny had gotten in somehow and broken the amulet. After the help, Danny was able to knock Ember out of Sam. Kitty came out of Paulina willingly to reprimand Johnny for being with.. er.. _in _another woman. So in gratitude, Danny had proposed a truce. But Johnny had wanted some leverage which he still didn't have. If Danny knew how to defeat Shadow, then Johnny was powerless. Therefore, Danny had retrieved the Pumpkin and the Soul Shredder. If Johnny broke the truce, Danny would use the Ghost Pealer on him. If Danny broke it, Johnny would release the Fright Knight, and another Fright Night would grip Amity Park...

**End Flashback**

Danny reached in to the box and pulled it out and immediately realized something was wrong. Johnny had been getting nervous as Danny had opened the box and was gone by the time Danny turned around. The Soul Shredder and pumpkin were just plaster replicas! Hollow inside, and poorly painted to boot.

"Johnny!" he yelled.

Johnny phased back in. "Hiyah," he said.

"What is this!"

"I'm sorry!" he begged. "The sword is with Kitty."

"I thought you said Vlad destroyed Kitty."

"No he didn't. Even worse than that. He controls her now. I don't know how, but he holds power over all the ghosts that come near him. He like brainwashes them; messes with their heads. There's nothing I can do about it. If I go to rescue her, he'll do the same to me."

"So Vlad has the Soul Shredder too? What else can go wrong." Danny stomped up the stairs and out of the building. Johnny caught up with him.

"He might not have it himself. Kitty sealed it in her ring." Danny continued walking. "Where are you going?"

"I'll tell you when I figure it out," Danny snapped.

Just then Danny saw a flash in the distance. It looked like a missile discharge. Then he saw the missile itself. Heading straight for the Striker Z and the obvlivious Marty. "Holy crap!" Danny cursed, going ghost and flying at the car. He turned intangible, making the power include Marty too as he hit the car and then flew straight up, as the car exploded right below them and fell to the ground, a smoldering pile of metal.

"NO!" Marty yelled.

"This is bad." Danny commented, as the shockwave from the car's explosion hit them and sent them flying across the street. Danny collided with a streetpost and found it hard to open his eyes.

"Well, well. Mr. Fenton. You have returned to this place at last," a voice said above him. It sounded like Mr. Lancer in a very bad mood. Danny tried to roll over and look up. He expected to wake up suddenly in poetry class and have to peel a saliva-soaked test from his forehead. But this nightmare wasn't going away. He opened his eyes and saw a tall combat boot. He turned over and followed it up to the rest of the figure. Stocking a bunch of guns and a two-tone combat mask that covered his right eye, Danny knew who he was looking at. Deathstroke the Terminator! Also known as Slade, the arch-enemy of the Teen Titans.

But he was transparent.

"You're.."

"A ghost? Yes. Sometimes even 90 of your brain isn't enough to strategize perfectly."

"I was going to say standing on my arm." Danny replied, sarcastic as ever.

About this time Marty woke up. And saw Slade. "Holy cross-overs Batman!" he yelled.

Slade turned to the older time traveler, his head jerking once or twice in rage. If he had had a right eye it would have twitched.

"You're treading dangerously close to the fourth wall boy," he said walking over to Marty. "Don't push it." Despite being an adult, Marty was still very much a 'boy' compared to Deathstroke the Terminator, who'd been in the business of assassination since Marty was a toddler. Still, age and even death hadn't seemed to slow Deathstroke down. He picked Marty up by his shirt collar. He wouldn't kill him, of course. That would only give the Potentate one more ghost to add to her army. But he would rough him up some.

Making a few strikes to the torso, Ghost Slade knocked the breath out of Marty and tossed him across the street. Unfortunately, dying had seemed to reset all the training he'd given his brain, perhaps because he now no-longer had one. This meant it was back to square one of mental capacity. But he still had his skill.

"I'm going ghost!" Danny yelled, the white rings of transformation sliding over him. Danny Phantom darted at Slade, punching him twice in the face. Slade staggered back, but then countered with a crescent kick that knocked Danny in the direction of Marty. Recovering before he hit the ground, Danny landed hard and skidded across the asphault, firing two ectoplasmic blasts at Slade, who just blocked them with his fists.

"Face it, child," Slade said. "You are grossly out classed."

"Why are you even attacking us? Do you work for Vlad?"

"Hardly. I'm just bored really. Nobody pays a ghost for a hit-job. And half the Titans are already dead. So I thought I'd fight someone who looked like a worthy opponent. The fabled ghost boy who defeated the fire demon--The Prime Immortal. You've fallen far in ten years, Danny."

"Slade dashed forward, kicking Danny in the face and sending him flying straight up, where he then leapt into the air and smashed him downwards back toward the rough pavement. But Danny span backwards out of the descent and shot an ecto-blast straight up towards Slade that hit him in the face. He stopped, and the two continued to fight in the air, breifly trading punches and kicks before Slade pulled out a shotgun and fired it at Danny, point blank.

It didn't kill him, though. It just knocked him back and stung like... A lot of really painful things.

"You like it?" Slade asked. "I designed it myself. Just turns the tide in a close up battle. Nothing lethal. To you, anyway."

Still stinging, Danny through a flurry of ectoplasmic blasts at Slade, who dodged them and hit Danny hard with a chop to the neck, then smacked him in the face with the butt of the shotgun. Finally, Slade flipped over and dropped an axe-kick onto the now-prone Danny's stomach, sending him towards the ground...

Where Danny landed hard, pain shooting up his back. and down his legs and arms. The only thing that didn't hurt from that attack was his head, which hurt from Slade's slamming a shotgun into his face.

Slade powered up his ecto-flight energies and started to descend quickly. Killing the halfa... What would happen indeed? Would he become all ghost? Would he just quit existing? Slade had no idea. But killing the halfa would make his name legendary again. But as he approached, no more than twenty feet above Danny Phantom, a wide lavendur blast of energy caught him in the side of the head and shoulder, knocking him away and through several gutted out buildings. Danny sat up, ignoring the pain to try and find where his un-expected rescue came from.

"Are you alright?" the voice asked Danny. He turned to see...

_Valierie!.._

No, it wasn't Valerie. But the armored combat suit was identical, save it was purple instead of bright red. And the voice that had come out of it had a hispanic accent, not the tell-tale rasp of Valerie's voice. And the hovering metal battle platform she rode on was different too. It was shaped more like a falcon than a manta-ray.

"You're..." she stammered when she'd finally taken a good look at Danny. Then she flew off her metal platform as an invisible Slade had knocked her away. She skipped along the asphault like a stone across water until the platfrom corrected itself and caught her, just as Valerie's would have.

"Another one bites the dust?" Slade said into all the dust this battle was putting into the air. It seemed his one eye made it harder to see his opponent in the darkness and dust.

"Nope. I'm fine, ghost. But you won't be able to say the same in just a minute!" the purple-clad ghost-fighter leapt out of the dust and kicked Slade in the face with a boot-mounted device that repeled ectoplasm. Slade's head split in to for a moment, and while he recovered, the warrior drew from her belt...

"A Fenton Soul Sabre?" Danny puzzled as she activated the purple blade that matched the one from her suit and from her gun. He ran over to the prone Marty, but keeping his eye on the fight above him. Marty had some bruises on his torso, visible because his shirt had been ripped by the same sharp object that made a huge gash in his face.

_Well, _Danny thought, _good a time as ever to field test what Raven taught me._..

He reached down and focused his energies into healing the big cut on Marty's left cheek. (Yes, I mean his face.) Raven had taught him a few healing techniques she knew outside her empathetic ones. Because Danny did not have the power of Empathy, he would never be able to heal like Raven could. But he could use small bursts of ectoplasm to mend small wounds and fuse broken bones. It was crude compared to a senzu bean or an ER, but it would do for now... If it worked.

Several small flashes of green-white light appeared around the laceration, and moved inward as the gash stitched itself shut. But Marty remained unconsious. Whatever Slade had done to him, he would need time to recover.

Danny, no longer worried about Marty bleeding to death, looked up towards the fight. The Purple Girl now seemed to have the upper hand. She shot two more beams at Slade from her gun. It looked like something he'd seen his mom planning a long time ago. Who was this girl and how did she have ghost-gear? Slade dropped back and pulled out a submachine gun from his belt. From the way Purple was dodging, Danny knew those shots had to have been lethal or something like it.

He flew up, and pulled out his thermos.

"HEY MISTER **WILSON**!" Danny screamed at Deathstroke in his best Denace the Menace impersonation. The Terminator looked that way, again angry. His right eye would have been twitching again, if it had existed. But Danny was suprised that his distraction had worked. Slade dodged away from where Danny was pointing the thermos, right into Purple Girl's roundhouse, that sent him flying. Danny lanced out a blue wave from the thermos and pulled Slade in.

Slade sighed, "Once the worlds greatest mercenary, reduced to this."

Danny landed and so did the ghost-huntress. She ran over to him, hand on a Fenton Pistol, but not drawing it. "It is you!" She yelled when she was in visual range of Danny. "Danny Phantom! Daniel Fenton!"

"Who _are_ you?" Danny asked.

The woman took off her helmet. Her hair was black, and her eyes were enourmous, sub-anime in size She was indeed hispanic, and she was quite attractive. "My name is Dora Toledo," she told Danny. "I can take you to your mother!"

"My mom! She's alive.." That was the best news Danny had heard all year... But could this ghost-hunter lady be trusted?


	11. A Faint Spark

_Long ago, Maddie had told her son that Hope was one of the three most important things in the world, the others being Faith and Love. It was said that Love was the greatest, but greatest and most important aren't always the same thing. After all, if there is nothing to hope for, then how can one have faith? And how can one love if one is hopeless? She had gone on to tell of a fairy tale that Danny no longer remembered clearly. It was said that a tiny amount of hope could arouse hope in others. And with that hope, a tiny boy had defeated the most evil ghost ever. True, it was just a fairly tell, but Danny remembered its message well._

_A small Spark of Hope grew to a burning Ember. And that Ember became a Flare. And the Flare gave the boy and amazing power that he could use to conquer the evil ghost._

_Ironic that, though just an imaginary construct his mother had used to demonstrate important concepts to his young mind, this fairly tale was coming true in his life.But it would take a lot more than a spark of Hope to defeat him. It would take more than an Ember. It would take more than a Flare. But could Danny generate that kind of hope by himself? He'd have to. Because unlike Sizzle, Vlad was an enemy his rage alone couldn't over come. He'd need the hope of others to support him. Just like in the fairy tell._

_After all, there was no ghost more evil than Vlad Plasmius._

_

* * *

_**Master's Castle, Wisconsin, April 5, 2015, 3:23 AM**

The sky was dark above Vlad's compound. He had always called it Master's castle. But to the rest of the world it was just The Palace. Everybody knew what it meant; with Las Vegas destroyed it couldn't mean the casino and/or hotel by the same name, if indeed there was one, as Vlad assumed there was. So it was just the Palace. A symbol of the corruption of Emperess Valerie.

He laughed. People tend to do that over nothing at all when they've gone insane. All the people still thought some super-powered young African woman was responsible for the ghost invasion. They believed it was indeed Valerie Gray. It was Vlad's ingenious plot of course. He would eventually 'defeat' Valerie and become the ruler of this empire and both name and deed. And with the fame he'd recieve for defeating the scourge Valerie represented, he'd own all of America... And then, he could hunt down the two things that his wealth, his power, and his evil had still _as of yet_ been unable to grant him.

Daniel and Maddie Fenton. What had happened to them? He'd heard that Maddie was the leader of a small band of ghosts fighters on the rim of his territory. But she'd eventually cave. He was going to save the world soon, after all...

But Dany.. He didn't know where Danny was. Or when he was. A scout he'd sent had reported that he had gotten into a flying car with a strange man ten years ago, and that the car had exploded shortly after take off. But there was no wreckage. And not nearly enough energy had been produced for the whole car to have been converted to energy in the explosion. It was as if the car had defied the laws of physics. This had puzzled Vlad for years...

But recently, he'd found the answer. Or rather, the answer had stumbled upon him. If Daniel ever returned, Vlad had always expected it to be to Amity Park. So he had monitered that town closely for years and it had finally payed off. A time macine. Made out of a car. Very interesting indeed. Vlad surveyed the sleek paintless exterior of the DeLorean. It had been just over 10 years since it's designers, John and Emmet, had died. _Soon_, Vlad thought, _they will join my army._ And if Daniel were to ever return, then Vlad would destroy him utterly as well.

Maddie writhed in his arms. Of course, it wasn't the real Maddie, but a ghost he'd overshadowed into dressing like Maddie and acting the part of his concubine. She was really a worthless ghost, but hidden under that blue hazmat suit, she looked the part, save for the pale transparent skin and green hair. Vlad could always pretend. If for no other reason than to keep what sanity he had left. He held up a ghost charm familiar to the audience. It is a repaired version of the one Jinx used in the flashback! How did Vlad get it? And repair it? The answers to those questions are lost in time.

**Present Tense. Why? I just think it works better with this scene.**

"No, no, dear," Vlad calms the ghost. Her head falls back, and then she looks forward. She's not wearing Maddie's traditional Ectoplasm detecting goggles, so we can see her eyes. The eyes glow red at the same time as Vlad's charm, indicating she is being put back under his control. Vlad smiles his trademark Wicked Grin (TM)...

"Of course, Lord Plasmius." The voice may be familiar, but perhaps not. It sounds far too drugged to recognize. But of course, it isn't drugs affecting her.

**End Present Tense. Yeah, that was short.**

In the hands of a young sorceress like Jinx of the Troika, a trio of criminals who operated out of Jump City, the amulet would only charm those under extreme duress, much in the same way the Amulet of Aragon worked. But in the hands of A halfa, it would do more. And with Danny gone, Vlad was not just any halfa. He was something more...

In Vlad's hands the amulet can charm armies. He didn't know where it came from, but he had thanked Jinx personally by making her second in command to his amry. Only Fox Rommel was above her. He'd siphoned the battle strategies of a hundred loyal ex-soldiers that had been honorably discharged with a bullet. They were his too now, but without their strategies, they were mindless brutes. Perfect soldiers though. Vlad understood that with the charm he was unstoppable. He could control the very essence of ectoplasm. And if Jack's son ever did show up, he would perish easily. In away, the amulet was almost _better _than the power that Danny Phantom had stolen from him.

(**Writer's Note**: Just in case you're confused, this happened in Danny's Inferno. I would tell you to go read it now, but since it would probably make you like my story less, I insist that you finish Time Phantom first. If you really want to know, though, the URL is in Chapter 4, or just search for Legend (underscore) Maker)

Vlad returned to his throne room and chuckled. All this time and he'd never encountered Jack's ghost. Perhaps Jack had wised up and stayed away. After all, coming close enough to fight Vlad would only mean falling under his control. But the most amusing part of it all was that it was ultimately Jack's fault. After all, it was he who forgot to carry that 2...

**A forested area, somewhere in Colorado**

Danny followed Dora, as she led the way through the trees. Danny had been here before. This was the same area that Vlad's cabin had been in when he'd tried to divert Danny and his mother in order to kill Jack. That plan had failed because Jack had been prepared. But he couldn't have prepared himself for an imposion device buried five inches under the ground prior to the fair. He couldn't have anticipated having his world cave in around him, and his body going with it... _Best not to think about what monsters do, lest I become one. _Danny didn't know where the wording had come from. It sounded like something Noel would say, he thought. The guy had an extreme quote fetish at times.

The woods around them were over grown, as they had been ten years prior. But now they were even less traveled to to half the population evacuating and a third of those who remained dying. Dora didn't talk much. Danny asked her things, though; she mostly ignored them or told him his mom would explain everything.

Marty was carried on her hovering platform. It wasn't rocket-powered like Valerie's had been, but rather used something more like the magnetic repulsors on Marty's future car. Every now and then they seemed to reach and impasse, when four huge mechanical limbs extened from Dora's backpack and lifted her up. Eventually, they ran into a clearing, where the grass and tree's were a little shorter. And Danny saw Vlad's hunting cabin in the distance.

"Full circle," he whispered to himself.

The three (Four? Danny didn't know if the computerized backpack was sentient or not) made their way to a hill above Vlad's cabin with a smaller clearing. There Dora stopped.

"Backpack," Dora said. "I need a map."

"Can do," a childlike voice came from the machine. It was far from cheerful though. Three prongs jutted out suddenly from the sides and top of the backpace, over Dora's head and to her sides. They worked together to project a threedimensional hologram of the immediate area. An arrow showed them which way they were facing, and a flashing dot pinpointed their destination.

"We're about three miles away now," she told Danny. "You think you can make it or should we rest at that cabin back there? We've stocked it with supplies incase of an emergency. For some reason, though your mother refuses to go in it."

"I don't blame her," Danny said. Still, he'd made his best retort ever in that cabin. But that small bit of nostolgia couldn't make him forget who Vlad ultimately was. His arch enemy. "We should keep going."

_Maddie, I feel personally repsonisble for the way Jack acted at our college reuinion... _Vlad's face didn't even hint that his words were dishonesty incarnate. If the devil was the father of all lies, then Vlad must have been his first born.

Danny had been miffed by that. But he knew what to say to make Vlad seeth a bit. _Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't dad possessed by some filthy. Putrid. Lonely. **Single. **Ghost._

Vlad had been so furious he shot danny with an ecto-beam, but he betrayed none of it to Danny's mother...

It was about an hour and a half later when they'd arrived. Danny had cut some of the time off by allowing them to fly through a sheer wall with his intangibility. But keeping both humans and the gear intangible, as well as himself, left him a bit drained. Marty still hadn't awoken from the concussion he'd received in Ghost Slade's attack. Danny didn't know it, but Marty was pretty used to that sort of thing.

The area was like a cemetary. Fitting, Danny thought, for a ghost-hunting operation. Nothing stood out as the headquarters of a paramilitary group, though. But Dora led the group to a grave. Nothing about the grave seemed special. Except the name on the headstone.

_Hailey Ann Roxx_

That was strange for two reasons. First of all, Hailey, also known as Sizzle the fire demon, didn't have a grave. She had been killed atop Titans Tower and her body had been destroyed when the self-proclaimed god, Lord of the Night had leveled the tower in Jump City. And that had been more than two years ago.

The second reason was that there were only about four people on earth who knew the name, Samantha Manson, Tucker Foley, and Noel Collins, the Teen Titan known as Savior. Perhaps the one with the pretentious name had told the rest of the Titans at some point, but that didn't change the fact that the grave was strange. As far as Danny knew, Roxx wasn't a very common surname.

Dora walked over to the grave and touched the H, then several other letters and designs around the side that looked like letters, until she had spelled out "Hail Sizzle"..

Danny cringed at that, but saw the security benefits it could provide. A whole area about 20 square feet around the grave slid downwards, going under on what seemed to be a hydraulic lift. When they got to the bottom, Dora stepped off and walked down a long corridor and through a familiar green barrier that made him stop in his tracks. He pushed Marty through, and upon not noticing Danny's absense Dora stuck her head back through.

"You coming on?"

"I can't. This thing.. It's the Fenton Ghost Catcher."

"Yeah. It keeps the ghosts out. But you're not in ghost form right now."

"It doesn't matter. It will seperate me from my ghost form if I walk through it."

"And you chose this life anyway?" Dora looked surprised. "You have more cajones than myself, then."

That struck Danny even has he turned off the catcher and let Danny in. He had chosen to keep going. At the time, he'd been more concerned with Tucker and catching Desiree than anything, and hadn't even considered giving up his powers. _There were a lot of times you could have given up and didtn't, Danny. _A voice in his head reminded him. Oddly, it sounded like Raven. And Noel. And Cyborg. And Starfire. All of them. Danny agreed though. He'd guessed there was no turning back now for a long time now. Perhaps ever since he'd caught the Lunch Lady. And definietly since Vlad discovered his identity. That was the sacrifice a superhero had to make, though. Was it really worth it? He wasn't exactly sure yet. Noel had warned him of this, though. It was a hard life, and Noel was bitter and cynical living proof of it...

The whole time he'd been pondering these things, he'd been following Dora as well. She stopped outside a metal door that just said _Maddie_ on it. So this was it. He'd finally meet this terrible future version of his mom. He didn't know that he'd like what he'd see, but he had to know what was going on in this crazy underground base.

"Well, Danny." Dora said. "My cousin Paulina will take care of your friend. I can only show you the door. You have to open it," she said, stepping out of Danny's path to the door.

"Isn't a little post-apocolyptic to be quoting movies so lightly?" Danny asked.

"I'm not quoting a movie. I've never even seen a movie. I just mean I can't open the door! It only responds to Fenton DNA," she said, pointing to a small thumb panel to the side of the door.

"Oh," Danny chuckled, embarrassed. "I knew that." He pressed his thumb onto the door, and entered. The room was fairly baren, just a few cots on the walls, and a chair at the other end of the room. Containing a female figure in a blue hazmat suit.

"Mom?" Danny asked... The chair spun around, and the figure in it looked up from her tea.

"Danny." She smiled. There was something profound in her eyes. Something that hadn't been there in a long time.

It was _hope_.  
**  
**_  
_


	12. Harbinger

**Author's Note: **Sorry it took so long to update. Cursed school. Anyway. I believe I'll have the first chapter of Legacy of the Tamaranian up by the end of this weekend, so stay tuned!

**Haven Base, Colorado**

"Danny," Maddie said. It came out along side a laugh of joy. "Danny!" She embraced her son. Maddie had been fairly hopless for a long time. But now, with Danny and his power, the dread could be lifted! Her son could free the world! She told herself this. And she believed it.

"Mom..." Danny returned the embrace. Wow. Ten years. It had been_ ten years _since she'd seen him. And so much had changed...

Danny sat down in a chair near Maddie's. "Mom," he said, "please tell me what is going on here! What happened?"

"Oh Danny. You... You haven't changed a bit. Where have you been?"

"Mom. I... I came here in a time machine. I've not been anywhere."

Maddie's eyes seemed to drop at that. He hadn't been training. He was not out learning some omnipotent technique as she'd so often told herself for comfort. He was the same he was when he'd dissapeared. Not everything had changed.

"Danny. A lot has changed since you've been gone."

"I need to know everything..."

**In another room..**

Marty's eyes flickered open. Everything was dark. His vision extened mere inches infront of his face. He rolled over, not sure what to make of the situation, and a soft feminine hand touched his arm. He rolled the way it pulled.

"Jennifer, is that you?" he asked, "I had the most horrible dream. Me and Doc went into the future and he got wasted... And I was attacked by a one-eyed mercenary. It was terrible."

"There, there now." A voice came. "You're safe now. In the security of the Haven Bunker."

Marrty sat up in his bed: "THE HAVEN BUNKER!" he blurted.

A light flickered on, and Marty looked up to see a hispanic woman in a faded yellow jumpsuit resembling the red one Valerie had worn in the past. "This place is secured against ghost attacks," she told him.

"How did I get here? Where is Dan... where is the Phantom?"

"Danny is with his mother," the woman told him. "I'm Paulina..."

She may have given her last name, but Marty was dazed and didn't hear it. So this was a ghost bunker? Some sort of shelter from Valerie's forces. Actually, Vlad's forces. Marty continuted to forget what Danny had told him. It didn't make any sense. If he wanted to rule the world, then why didn't he just declare himself ruler? What did he need the body of Valerie Gray for? How had it even lasted so long? 

Marty surveyed the area. It was a long room with similar economy beds against the walls. A door at the far end released into a hallway that was visible through some windows. The base was apparently designed to prevent people from hiding out inside it, which made sense. Ghosts were know to phase through walls at random and other such acts of paranormal nonsense. And now that Deathstroke had destroyed the Striker Z time-machine, Marty didn't know how they would get home.

"What is your name?"

"Er... I go by Marty," he told her. She was so gorgeous! Of course, he was a married man, and she only interested him aesthetically. But her beauty only made him long for Jennifer's embrace all the more. Would he ever see her again?

"You're Marty!" Paulina's words and expression betrayed a suddenly understanding and a spark of hope. But sadness remained too. "I have something to show you, then. Can you walk?"

**Back in Maddie's Chamber**

"After we'd been driven out of Amity Park, we relocated to a government housing area. Well. A series of them. We stayed in New Mexico for several years. All the while, metahumans from around the world fought to contain the seemingly endless armies. The Empress Valerie..."

Danny cringed at that...

"... could summon and control legions of dead soldiers. I once heard that here are about as many people alive today as the sum of the lives in earth's history before this generation. I don't know if that is true, but I don't believe it. So many came from the portal that was stolen that day. Eventually, the Empress built a new portal. It could summon ghosts by the hundreds. How they stay under control, I have no idea. Sometimes we get a rogue ghost or two randomly doing something bad, but they mostly serve the throne...

"...The US Military was re-equiped with weapons that proved somewhat effective, and the metahumans continued to fight. Eventually, something of a truce was reached, and the Empire is no longer an expansionist force. But that may change. Because Superman was killed just last week and.."

Danny gasped at that. He interrupted his mother. "Mom. It isn't Valerie that is doing these things. Her body was possessed! This is really all because of.."

"_Vlad_," Maddie finished. "I know. After the town was destroyed, Jazz told me about your powers. Sam and Tucker found me and told me everything I didn't know. But even they didn't know that Vlad was behind this. They thought Valerie had gone insane and allowed ghosts to control her or something. None of it made sense unitl I reviewed the video of Superman's death..."

Maddie told him of seeing the explosion and the face in it. The face of Plasmius, the ghost Jack had 'defeated' all that time ago in Wisconsin. And then it make sense, because he looked exactly as Sam had described him to her.

"So..." Danny said. "Who are these people?"

Maddie sighed and smiled sadly. "Well, Paulina you know. Dash and Qwan are here too. Dora is the cousin of Paulina. Her parents were social relief workers killed in Africa years back. She was forced to survive on her own as a child. She had only her backpack and it's AI, and a genetically engineered sentient monkey named Boots as companions. Somehow she made it back to Norh America, where she lived with relatives. She was visiting Paulina's family when Vlad attacked Amity Park."

"Where are Tucker and Sam?"

That seemed to hurt Maddie. "Sam is here." She said sadly. "She comes and goes. She's changed a lot Danny. Her idealism is gone. All she wants now is revenge. Terrible. It really hurts to look at her anymore. What she's become is so unlike who she used to be and.."

Danny interupted. "But what about Tucker? And what does she want revenge for?" Danny was beginning to panick. When his mother of all people dodged a question, it was bad news.

"Oh, Danny. I'm sorry..." Maddie's expresion said it all. "A ghost who called himself Clockwork murdered him. Sam's been trying to find him ever since, but we believe he skipped this era. He can control time."

Danny's heart began to ache. The hole his father's death had caused had just been torn a few miles wider. His best friend was gone. And what hurt the most was that he was probably a slave to Vlad now. His eyes begand to water. But he didn't have time to be sad... He quickly let his grief give way to anger. And he buried that to use at a more oportune time. He was getting used to dealing with terrible tragedies.

"And the guy at the gate? With the green jumpsuit?" Danny asked, changing the subject.

"That's Gyzz. He's said to have a checkered past, but none of that matters. He's really smart, and pretty much runs this whole base. He upgraded Dora's backpack to hold weapons and such. In all there are about 20 people that call this place home. We do what we can to save pulsers from ghosts attacks, and we fight Vlad in any small ways we can."

"Pulsers?" Danny asked?

"It's what we call the living. Since they have a pulse. Now, dear, are you sure your alright? How did you get here? I mean... Where in heaven's name did you get a time machine?"

Danny told her of Marty and his time traversing Striker Z.

And that name seemed to enlighten Maddie...

**Briefing Room**

Gyzz manipulated his backpack, which was hooked into the complex's media system, with his thoughts. Eventually, the small screen flickered to life.

_A grainy image of Doctor Emmet Brown appeared on the screen. He seemed to be in a hospital. He looked at the camera and addressed the viewers directly._

"Hello. I am Dr. Emmet Brown. The date of this recording is February 24, 2005. As you may know, the Green Lanter Core has set out to defend Amity Park General Hostpital here in Amity Park, Wyoming, from the continuos threat of the ectoplasmic army of Valerie Gray. Unfortunately, these brave men and women are unable to hold the army off much longer, and this hostpital will soon fall under direct attack. Most of the patients have been evacuated, however, and this world's heroes are making one last stand here in effort to slow the army down."

The video flickered out for a moment.

_"This message is directed to my dear friend Marty McFly. If you are viewing this message, my friend, then I am likely long since passed on. I promise that I will remain in the ghost zone, if that is indeed my fate, and stay as far from the mind controlling amulet Valerie possesses as I possibly can. She will not have me without a fight._

"The purpose of this video is to inform you of a way home. I was able to sneak out and back in during an evacuation run, and am aiding in the battle in anyway I can. Unfortunately, I am unable to reach the proper speed to initiate the time travel mechanism inside the hospital, and can no longer escape. I fear I am doomed to go down with this structure. But it is not a paralyzing fear. I have repaired the Flux Capacitor and sequestered the DeLorean in the hospital basement. I hope it shall remain safe until the day it can be put to use in halting this terrible tragedy.

"Please, Marty. Make me proud. If the Phantom Child is with you, then tell him that all our hope is riding on him. And it is on you as well, Marty. This is the last wish of a man who's lived beyond his years in epochs he should never have seen. Good bye."

The video ended. Danny thought it was was powreful, and he was moved... But Marty was actually crying.

"Where and when did you find this tape?" Danny asked the room. Gyzz hesitated and Maddie answered.

"It wasn't a tape. It seems that this Doctor set up a machine to broadcast his message on a certain date. We monitor Amity Park of course, because we always expected you to return there first. Which you did. But Vlad did too, it seemed. Before we could get there, the time machine was taken by a group of ghosts. They all had the red eyes indicative of Vlad's control."

Vlad had gotten there first.

"Then we'll have to fight back. That machine is the only thing that can undo this!" This came, surprisingly, from Marty.

Danny was sick when he saw the way his mother looked at him. The expectant look she gave him when she wanted him to rise above himself and achieve greatness. He knew what she was thinking...

"Danny. You can defeat Vlad. You have the power to end this."

"No Mom, I don't," Danny said somberly.

"What do you mean?" Maddie's hope was gone. Now it was replaced by horror.

"Vlad is much stronger than I am. He was ten years ago and he's had ten more years to train today. I don't know what I can do."

Maddie suddenly realized something: _He doesn't even know _how_ he defeated the fire demon._

**Master's Castle**

"I swear it, my liege," said the informant, a small grey ghost. "I saw the Phantom Child. He has returned to Amity Park."

Vlad's mouth twisted in disgust. Why now? Why had he returned after ten years, just when Vlad was about to become ruler of the world?

He summoned his crystal communicator with the wave of his hand. His ghost vultures carried the huge crystal-ball esque device over to him.

"_Hanma soucktah Rose!" _Vlad said into the crystal, indicating the target of this correspondence.

"Howdy, Mi'lord," the dusty ghost on the other end grinned. "Need some holes in some varmits?"

"Please drop that ridiculous accent, Rose. I need you to find someone. Her name is Maddie."

"How can I go about finding someone with just her first name?"

"You idiot. I have a lead. Now listen closely..."


	13. That Which We Call A Rose

**Somewhere in Vlad's Territory**

There is a saying of the ghost known as Richard 'Rose'…

_"He's got a soul so cold and rattlesnake mean it's said that humanity erased him from the history books and the devil kicked him out of hell."_

And Buford Tannen might have believed it, too, if he'd believed in the existence of hell. Which he didn't, because if anyone deserved to go there, he did…

But as it stood, he could only emphatically agree with the first half of the saying. Then again, he couldn't imagine a devil much crueler. Rose was a sadist if there ever was one; he didn't just kill for fun, like Buford had done with Injuns and Chinamen. He tortured anyone he felt like torturing and got a kick out of it. Buford was afraid he would turn on the gang one day.

Part of this paranoia came from the fact that Buford did _not_ like taking orders from anyone. When he'd been alive, he had been the boss. He had called the shots. Now, he was taking orders from this half-pint white-clad little…

"Alright," came Rose's voice from the other room. "We're moving out. Our target here goes by the name of Flare. He's ghost, and he can burn ya. We're not out to do much more than rough 'im up, though. Our real target…"

He reached into the pocket of his pearly white jacket.

"...is this here bunch." Rose held up three pictures. One was instantly recognizable as the Legendary Phantom Child that Boss Vlad feared so much. Another was the fabled ghost huntress called Maddie Fenton. The middle one struck Buford the most, though.

"Is that _Clint Eastwood?" _Buford asked, hovering closer to Rose and the ectoplasmic photos.

"Vlad said this hombre's a-called McFly."

That name definitely rang a bell… The Irish bugs that had lived outside of Hill Valley back in Buford's livin' days. "Is that so?"

"Quit yer starin'! We gotta move!" Yelled Rose. Everybody jumped to it. Nobody disobeyed the man when his finger was on the trigger.

And Rose's finger was _always _on the trigger.

**And Incase You'd thought I'd Forgotten Timmy…**

The godchild and his duo of faries struggled through the woods outside the Colorado compound. "Are we there yet?" Cosmo complained.

"Shut up!" Timmy yelled. "How can you be tired? You get to ride on my wrist!"

"Yeah, well I've been here collecting _your _sweat for 48 hours now!" Cosmo retorted.

Timmy smacked himself in the head. "I wish I could fly!" Why he didn't just wish to be where Danny was is lost to time. But fly he did, and arrived at the cemetery much quicker than he would have otherwise.

"Hey Sport, you mind if we take our normal forms for now?" Wanda inquired. "All this _being wrist bands_ is sort of draining our magic." Timmy nodded in ascent. The fairies poofed themselves above his head.

Cosmo began wringing liquids out of his green hair, and Wanda poofed herself a dry outfit. "Now what, Timmy?" Wanda asked.

"I dunno. I thought you said this was where they were headed, Cosmo?"

"You trusted _my_ sense of direction? HAHAHAHA!" Cosmo laughed hysterically, much to Wanda's chagrin.

"Ugh. Are you **sure **I can't just wish us home…"

Cosmo and Wanda closed Da Rules. "We're certain, Timmy. You can't make any wish that would alter time or speed up the harvest."

Timmy arched an eyebrow. "Why can't I speed up the harvest?"

"That rule was written back when most kids with Godparents were farmers. Speeding up the harvest would throw off the natural way of the economy. So the law is pretty much vestigial."

"It's what?" Timmy asked. Then he shrugged. "Can you teleport me off this rock?"

"That we can still do, Timmy," Wanda replied.

"Good. If Danny Phantom fails then I want a way off earth!"

Wanda sighed and would have fallen on her back in one frame, but she was not an anime character. So she just gave Timmy her Angry Glare.™

"You know, Sport," Wanda said suggestively, "don't you think maybe you could _help _out? You do have magical fairy godparents here to grant your every super-powered wish!"

"That's a brilliant idea!" Timmy yelled as if it wasn't obvious. He only wished for things like that when he thought it would be fun.

Timmy pulled a card out of his pocket. "I wish you two looked like Clefto and Ace again, and I wish I had…"

He held up the Maho Mushi trading card he'd removed.

"…All the powers of Sensei Kaze-Fu from the Galaxy Championship Saga of Maho Mushi!"

The fairies became dogs with capes, and Timmy suddenly glowed as he received the powers of the venerable old master.

"I wish I knew how to get into their seemingly secret base," Timmy told his fairies. Suddenly, the knowledge of the _Hail Sizzle_ password popped into his mind. He ran over to the tombstone the magic had identified and entered the cringe-inducing phrase. The tombstone slid down, and Cosmo and Wanda suddenly changed from dogs to gasping mice and darted into the shadows. Timmy wished for stealth mode once again…

**Inside the Compound…**

Danny fell flat on his back, but as always, he got right back up. His mother had taken the revelation about his weakness against Vlad pretty hard. But how could he hope to undo ten years of Vlad's experience and his enourmous army when he'd been powerless against him before? It wasn't like Danny to give up, but something told him they'd need a plan they didn't yet have before they could do anything. Or perhaps he was just paralyzed by fear. He hadn't faced anything this challenging since… Since Sizzle…

Stepping backwards, Danny brought his green Soul Saber down at Dora, who deflected the attack with her customized blue version and stabbed at Danny. Since Dora was human and Danny wasn't in ghost form, theoretically the ectoplasm disrupting blades wouldn't injure them.

Then again. Other ghost gadgets had worked on Danny's human form. A flash of purple light whizzed by.

At Marty's suggestion and his mother's order, Danny had agreed to let Dora train him. Sam had been gone for the past few weeks, according to his mother, and was expected to show up for more supplies at anytime. For some reason, Danny wanted to see her more than anything.

Danny parried a jab and sidestepped a vertical cut, and then countered with a few sweeping blows. Dora was definitely good, and Danny thought he could learn a lot of sword techniques from her. And if he ever got the past back to normal, he'd make sure to train with his mother in whatever martial art she was a Ninth _Dan_ in. Perhaps he could eventually add some sort of melee weapon or sword to his standard arsenal: he was quite partial to katanas.

**_BZZT BZZT _**A loud nose began blaring all around the trainer and trainee. A proximity alarm.

The base was receiving a new guest. Danny hoped it was Sam. But as he got to the fairly large antechamber, everyone looked puzzled. There was nobody there at all. But the elevator had clearly come down. If an invisible ghost had been near, then Danny's sense would have picked it up.

And the odds of wind or debris randomly punching in Hail Sizzle were about the same as an explosion producing a habitable planet…

Just then, there was a poof of lavender smoke in a corner with the words _Totally Visible_ in it. And out from it stepped..

Snake Eyes from GI Joe? No, not really, but that is what Timmy looked like in his new superhero outfit. The biggest thing to distinguish him from the GI Joe character was the duo of gauntlets on his arms, one green and the other pink.

Several of the denizens of the base pointed weapons at the diminutive figure.

"Who the heck are you?" Dash yelled.

Timmy walked forward, and said, "I am Kaze, Master of Winds and chi!" He had artificially deepened his voice, which sounded ridiculous. Danny thought it reminded him of a young male version of Ember McLean, but this guy couldn't be her. Unless she'd possessed him! Danny realized he couldn't sense ghosts in overshadowed people.

Maddie walked into the room.

"I beseech you all to allow me to assist you in your fight!" again, Timmy felt his voice sounded forced. He whispered into his gauntlet that he wished he had a better voice, but the wands denied the request. Apparently, all the voice actors and actresses not killed during the war had moved to Brazil, so the OddParents had nothing to go by. _Kuso._

"Danny," his mother said, "I can handle this. There is someone in chamber R-3 who I'm sure you'll want to see."  
**  
Sam…**

Danny used the thumb scanner to open the door to Sam's room. He gasped when he saw her. She'd grown up. Her hair wasn't tied up as it had always been in the past. It hanged over her shoulders, short but not cropped off. Her face had a scar on it, as did her right forearm. But otherwise it was the same face. Instead of her traditional goth-gear, she wore a black ghost hunter's jumpsuit like Dora's, but it was half removed, the part that would cover her torso tied around her sides.

She'd filled out, too. What was obviously an old shirt was stretched so that it left most of her abdomen uncovered, but it still bore the little purple design Sam always wore. Is this what his mom had meant? Sam had changed, just like everyone else. But something about her demeanor let Danny know it was more than just a cosmetic change. She seemed almost like a different person, and that just from looking at her.

"Hi, Danny." She said. She walked over to him and place her hands on his shoulders. _Is this really my childhood friend?_ They both thought. "My gosh, look at you. You haven't changed a bit."

"Sam. I'm so sorry. I heard about Tucker."

Sam's eyes got a hard edge, as did her tone of voice. "There's nothing to be sorry about. Not for you."

Danny looked up at her. She was a good head or two taller than him now. Sympathy was gone from her eyes. She looked… empty.

"So. Where did that come from," Danny said, meaning the scar on her face.

"I'd rather not talk about it," she said. "Just more proof that you try and save lives, and all that happens is more get lost; people get hurt."

"What do you mean?"

"When I tried to save Tucker from that (Sam swore here) Clockwork.." She trailed off.

"Tucker died anyway, and a bunch of people that wouldn't have died with him did, because I chose friendship over what was right. And all I have to show for it is this (she cursed again) scar." But she wasn't in a fury. But there was something bitter burning below the surface.

**_BZZT BZZT!_**The alarm again.

Danny and Sam rushed down to the antechamber as before. On the way, they only spoke once.

"When did you get in?" Danny asked.

"I came in yesterday through the north entrance." Sam replied.

When they arrived, the kid who called himself Kaze stood by the others, while Dora and Paulina struggled to remove the Ghost Catcher from door frame. They turned it off, releasing the ghost caught inside…

With spiked hair and denim shirt…

"Flare!" Danny blurted as Dora jerked him off the ground and pinned him against the wall with her Ecto-Repel cuffs.

"Do you know this ghost?" Maddie asked her son.

"Yes! We met in the past! Dora, let him go. He's on our side," Danny said. _I think, _he added silently.

"Danny-_chan_! Mcfurai-_san_!" Flare said as he greeted Danny and Marty.

"Um. Have we met?" Marty inquired.

"Oh, that is right. You have not met me in the past yet. How does time travel not confuse you? My mind is boggled every time I think about it!"

"I'm used to it," Marty said, but his words were drowned out in people talking and general confusion over the ghost that had stumbled in.

"Flare, what are you doing here?" Danny yelled. "These people hunt ghosts. You're a ghsot. Hence, you come here and you'll get hunted!"

"Actually," Qwan interjected, "we tend to shelter and/or redirect non-evil ghosts towards Brazil. That's where President Rice and all the nation's voice actors went."

"Whatever," Danny told the oversized ex-jock. Funny how Qwan and Dash had changed, but still retained much of themselves. At least _they_ looked up to _him_ now. Danny shoved the selfish thoughts out of his mind. This was no time for self-indulgence.

Flare caught his breath. (What he needed to breathe is unknown. But ghosts had to have some sort of energy to keep them anchored in the physical plane.) "Rose," he gasped out.

"Richard Rose and his gang roughed me up and said they were coming to kill you, and told me to stay away. I don't know how they new about our connection but.."

Sam interrupted him. "You idiot! You led them right to this place.. They're going to be here any.."

"GET DOWN!" Sam yelled, shoving Danny to the floor and simultaneously drawing a metal device from her belt and pressing the button that caused it to extend into to about 15 inches long, and deploy blades on both sides. It was a ghost-cutting axe like a Soul Saber.  
**_  
BANG _**

_**BANG BANG**_

Danny looked up. Sam had deflected two ghost bullets away from him.

The other shot had hit Dash square in the chest. And as he lay dying, Rose walked up, removed the loading chamber from his revolver, spun it once, and pushed it back in. That was all it took to reload his gun. It could be done in about a second and a half, maybe less. Then he unloaded six extra shots into Dash's skull, everyone standing, paralyzed by their base suddenly being compromised by a bunch of western rejects with ghost revolvers.

Sam, though, wasn't going to take this. She moved next, hurling her axe at Rose. Rose dodged to the side and it slammed into the face of one of his gang, which numbered about 12..

And then all Hades, Heck, Hell, and the Netherverse broke loose simultaneously. Danny went ghost and attacked Rose as he dodged.

"Guusuto-Ken!" he yelled, taking a cue from Flare's attack naming system, and launched a massive ectoplasmic fist at Rose. It knocked him back against the wall of the compound, which he phased through.

Gunshots echoed through the small room, deafening the people inside. Marty dived into a corner and saw Buford.

Buford saw Marty. "It _is _you! You varmint. You're Clint East..." his rant stifled as Sam cut him down with the Soul Saber she'd removed from Danny's belt. Buford faded back into the ghost zone.

Dora and Paulina were holding there own as well. The cousins worked with almost telepathic precision, deflecting the ghost-shots, which moved slower than real bullets for some reason. The Second Law of Villain Dynamics stated that the more powerful an enemy's projectile, the slower it must move, so these poisonous ghost projectiles were moving slow enough to deflect.

Dora dived at the feet of a gunslinger and cut at his legs, he jumped the cut and blasted down, but Dora rolled out of the way and Paulina attacked. The phantom gunslinger realized his mistake about two seconds before Paulina's Soul Saber pierced his face. He disappeared in a puff of ectoplasmic smoke.

Danny activate the Fenton thermos, and a bunch of ghosts scattered. Three got sucked in, reducing the number of remaining ghosts to four. One of them shot at Maddie, who fell over and pulled the Amityville Horror and used it to unload on the ghost foolish enough to fire at her and her companions.

"Like before!" Flare yelled.

Danny back flipped over a ghost writhing in pain from the wound his mother had caused and picked up Sam's axe. He used it to hack off the arm of a ghost and then dodged as Flare shot a stream of fire over his chest that seared the ghost nearest the exit. Danny felt pain explode up his leg and saw that the ghost he had maimed had just used his remaining arm to jab a knife into Danny's right hamstring!

"GAAHHOUGGH!" Danny yelled as he collapsed. He'd felt worse thought. He put his hand in the ghosts face and fired an ecto-blast, knocking it back into Qwan's fury of cuts with his red Soul Saber. It caught the ghost through the abdomen and he fell apart.

Danny sighed in relief…

**BANG BANG BANG!**

The shots crackled up from the ground, all intended for Maddie Fenton. Flare had been able to erect an ectoplasmic shield. But he was a split second to late. Because as Rose phased through the ground, he saw on of his un-aimed shots had hit Maddie Fenton in the arm.

And he had three rounds left….


	14. Kaze Prooves His Worth

_**Author's Note**: Sorry about the delay. School sucks, as always. Also, it has come to my attention that _

_**Disclaimer: **I own nothing but Flare and the situations invovled. Rose is copyrighted to Legend Maker, and some of his lines were written by her. Also, I finally got a beta reader for this story, (Thank you, LM!) so it might improved in clarity a bit._

The world seemed to stand still as Danny stood there, staring at his mom. The evil power in the projectiles Rose shot had been deflecting in two-thirds portion. Flare had managed to stop two of the gunslinger's three shots with a ectoplasmic shield

But one had caught Danny's mother in her right wrist.. Danny watched as the malevolent energy worked it's way up his mother's arm, slowly passing her elbow. If it got to her heart, there would be nothing he could do….

Danny was furious. "You son of a...!"

**_Click! _**Rose had set the hammer on his revolver. "This here is Casualty Jane, boy. Never misses if I'm aimin' in the right direction up to 40 degrees. Most guns need to be aimed right at the target, well, not my girl. As long as I'm pointing in your general direction I'll still get that sweet sound of metal striking flesh...though its not metal any more, a pity...I miss the smell of history.**"**

Rose's face twisted into a morbid smile. "By the way, Fenton, Vlad would see you **_alive._** But he said **_dead_** would do just as well."

Danny froze in place. If that gun could do what he'd said it could, he couldn't move without getting hit. There was too much distance between them…

"Flare Whip!" Yelled the spike-haired ghost near Maddie. A strand of fire lashed out from his hand at cut Maddie's arm off, and it fell to the ground, the wound cauterized by Flare's sheer heat. His mother screamed at the sudden additional pain and the following terrible numbness. Danny felt like gagging, but he was too awed by Flare's lack of subtlety: Flare grunted and swung the whip at Rose…

What could have been a devastating blow to Rose only licked him as he dodged to away from the whip and fired at Danny simultaneously. But his angle was off and the shot missed by a good clip. Danny rushed at Rose, who rolled over and tried to fire, but Danny kicked the gun from his hand and it landed near the exit, still sans the Ghost Catcher. So Rose shot up and started to chase his gun, but he wasn't quite fast enough.

"_SOUL_AR FLARE!" Yelled Flare as a black ball of fire shot out from his two hands, nailing Rose in right side. No body even cringed how awful a pun the attack's name was because of how effective against Rose it proved. His jacket caught with ghostly fire, and Rose writhed on pain a minute before shrugging the white overcoat off.. revealing an identical one underneath it. Apparently the coat regenerated, but that was unimportant. Rose dived on his gun. He ejected the chamber, spun it once, and shoved it back in, and aimed towards the crowd and fired once, right into Danny and Flare's combined ectoshield.

But Rose was obviously wounded. Whatever Flare's fire had done it had definitely hurt him. Suddenly, a gust of wind made a new barrier between Rose and the rest, and Danny shot an ectoplasmic bolt out at Rose, at the same time looking over at Kaze, who had just joined the fight. (Of course, this is really Timmy, but Danny doesn't know.)

Rose smirked and looked at Danny. "I suppose you want to know what happened to your _sister._"

"What do you mean!" Danny yelled at Rose.

Rose pulled the hammer back on his gun, and then started twirling it like Revolver Ocelot "You'll have to beat it out of me."

Danny's eyes flared green with anger. Earlier he had only 'went ghost' in the loosest sense of his transformation, uniting with his Ghost Self under the flesh. This time he went full on with his powers. "I'm** Going Ghost!" **The white transformation rings slid around his body and his clothes were replaced by the familiar black HAZMAT suit.

But Rose was gone, his footfalls echoing down the dark hallway.

**Above the Colorado woods**

Rose wiped his brow—not because of actual sweat, but due to habit. That had been a very close call. He flew up above the compound hoping his bait had worked. In reality he knew nothing about Danny's sister beyond what Vlad did.

Suddenly, he was smashed hard in the face as Danny made himself visible. Fortunately, the blow knocked him far away enough from the Phantom that he could still use his gun. He flipped the chamber out to reload again, when suddenly a pink blast of energy swept by and knocked it out of his hand.

"What in tarnation!" Rose exclaimed. He swore as he looked to his side and saw the newcomer called Kaze, his hand freshly hot from the _ki_ blast that disarmed Rose. But rather than following up with another attack, he flew after the gun!

"Danny, take him down," yelled Kaze as he went after the gun. The diminutive superhero quickly kicked the gun off into the distance. Rose looked the way it had gone and cursed at Kaze.

At the same time, Danny took his opening and rushed Rose, drilling his fist into his face. The two exchanged a few blows until Rose got angry and sent an explosion of his ghost aura out that knocked Danny away.

Danny removed a Soul Saber from his belt and turned it on. The blade shined green, like the one his mother used. It was only single-bladed, but that was OK. Danny only needed one cutting edge now that Rose was unarmed.

"Tell me about my sister, Rose!" Danny said, his voice deadly serious. He raised the Soul Saber in threat.

" Don't y'all know you don't bring a blade to a gunfight boy?" Rose reached under his jacket…

**BLAM BLAM BLAM! **Three muffled explosions caught Danny off guard, and a sharp pain shot through his shoulder.

"Hey, boy. Just because I carry a magic revolver doesn't mean that's all I can use!" Danny saw through his pain-induced squinting that Rose now held two Desert Eagles. They weren't ghostly like his revolver, though. That meant they shot real bullets at least, not as nasty as the malicious power projectiles that came from Casualty Jane. But the pain in Danny's shoulder said otherwise, and Danny realized that Rose could charge the bullets with spectral energy as he fired. Imitating Dante, Danny thought.

(Why his mind would turn to a video game in the middle of a life-and-death battle was beyond his comprehension, so he put such thoughts out of his head and concentrated on Rose.)

"Truth of the matter is, I don't know a thing about yer sister, kid. I just lured ya' out here for killing or a'capturing. Now, since I'm not real sure I can win without my good gun, why don't you just run along before I get myself all riled up!"

"You killed Dash. As much as I hate how he used to be, I can never forgive you for that, you demented freak."

"Dash? Is that the name of the varmint I gave a lobotomy?" Rose grinned evilly again. "Shame. I'd wanted to shoot him in somewheres other than his head to make him scream for a while before he died. But you're Lady-friend and 'er _scary_ axe made that a little too dangerous for a _careful_ sadist like myself."

Danny's eyes narrowed in disgust. "Good Lord, you're sick."

Rose flashed a brief, smug grin. "Haven't you learned the ways of life yet boy? The Lord is just another gunslinger. The best way to get ahead is to be a faster one." He suddenly let loose a bunch of shots from his two nine-millimeter guns and Danny fell, barely avoiding the majority of the shots. One caught him in the ball of the foot, and he screamed in pain as he stopped himself inches before he hit the ground.

The wound sealed and Danny returned fire with an ecotplasmic energy blast at Rose. It hit the cowboy in the face and he flipped over backwards and continued to fire at Danny...

Rose couldn't keep this up. Everytime he turned to fire at the fast-moving phantom child, the wound the little Jap had inflicted almost paralyzed him, so he took off. Darting downward, Rose made a mad dash to where Kaze had kicked the gun, dodging fire from him and Danny. A blast from Danny almost tore through Rose's shoulder, and he changed direction. Turning invisble or intangible, and firing or doing whatever else he could to avoid getting blasted. Finally, he sensed his gun coming up.

"Hey, hombres!" Rose yelled at Danny and Kaze, "hold on a minute would you!" His tone was more arrogant than pleading.

"Oh yeah. We're going to give you a break. Right. You are one totally nutted-up cherio, Rose!" I'll let you guess which superhero said that.

Timmy burst into the clearing where Rose sat just long enough to see him focus and hear him chuckle arrogantly. "Wahh!" Some sort of ghostly rope surrounded Timmy and climed up towards his neck...

"Whaddaya think of the Omnis Lasso/Hangin' Rope pard'ner. "

"You..." Timmy choked out.. "Forgot something!"

"What's that?" Rose jerked the suffocating boy closer?

"Ma-kaze-ko-ho!" yelled Timmy. Well, as good as he could yell with his trechea partially shut. A dark purple vortex of wind lashed out from his hands and hurled Rose away. Timmy rolled it in his hands like a ball of _ki_ and then through it at Rose with enough force to knock over a few trees.

Suddenly a sharp pain shot into Timmy's right side, and Rose phased visible, pointing his gun at Timmy's abdomen. "You lose." Rose whispered. He fired several more times.

Timmy fell to the ground. Thankfully his amror had stopped the bullets, but they hurt like all get out. Rose had taken off though, and Timmy jumped up and tried to muster enough will-power to shrug off the pain.

Meanwhile, Rose flew intangibly through the trees. Lodged in a bush was his gun. Rose grabbed the gun and turned around, just in time to gasp as Danny drove both fists into his face. But when Danny saw that Rose had the gun, he turned invisible, and intangible, and flew away.

**_BANG!_**Rose fired once into the woods, blindly, but to no avail.

Suddenly, Kaze was back on him, smacking him around. He was able attack ghosts, it seemed, with his glowing pink and green gauntlets. But only when they were glowing. Rose timed his kick so that it would phase through the gauntlets when they were dormant, and backed away. But he could no longer see Kaze, so he took off to the north, hoping to lose them in the thick foliage. Then Kaze's chibi figure made itself visible above the trees and Rose threw the gun that way and pulled the trigger.

**_BANG!_**It should have been a direct hit, but Kaze just vanished.

Suddenly, Rose felt himself take a jab to the stomach and saw Kaze retreat away from him. How in tarnation had he done that? Some sort of Anime-style afterimage? Rose wondered where this guy had gotten his powers.

**BANG! **He fired at the retreating Kaze, only to have the same effect as last time. This time, Kaze tried to knock the gun out of Rose's hand, but he held on and pistol-whipped him away, and Kaze vanished as he sped up to avoid the a gunshot. But Rose suddenly gasped a green cloud and realized that Danny was near. He turned and pointed his gun, but Danny got the jump and he had to retreat. He was about to reload his gun when Kaze appeared.  
**_  
BANG!_**

**_BANG! _**On the second shot, Kaze yelled in pain or surprise (either way, Rose enjoyed it) and turned and pointed his gun at the now stationary Danny. He set the hammer...

And a chill ran up his spine. There was no bullet in the chamber. But he had carefully counted off only five shots. He never mis-counted his shots! Until now, it seemed...

But.

That.

Just.

**_DIDN'T._**

Happen!

Then it occurred to him that he had never finished reloading before Kaze had knocked the gun from his hand. And it only reloaded if _he_ spun it. It required a certain touch and Richard Rose had that touch. Gravity didn't. The loading chamber had been knocked back in by the fall, and there was nothing he could do about it without giving the gaffe away.

All he could do was hope that his face had betrayed none of his alarm.

"What's the matter, Rose?" Danny's trademark sarcasm had returned. "Lost your nerve?"

Rose smirked with false confidence, and he felt that he would be sweating under the pressure if he'd still had the glands for it. In fact, he might have even sweatdropped. But thankfully he didn't.

"No," he lied, "just giving ya' one more chance to come and see yer Uncle Vlad before I have to kill ya'!" He kept the gun trained on Danny.

"Well, that isn't going to happen, so you're gonna have to shoot me!" Danny's arrogant smirk was infuriating. That kid had had it!

"Yer just asking for me to kill you, aren't you!"

"Go ahead Rose." Danny spat the name. "Make my day!"


	15. Another Tragedy

**Author's Note:_ Sorry much that it has taken me so long to update. School. Deletion. The usual, you know. Mostly just laziness though. Did I mention that I am fluent in over six-million forms of procrastination?_**

**_

* * *

_**

"Make my day," Danny hissed at Rose. 

Rose's eyes narrowed in fury. "Kid, just surrender and I'll take you in, no fight. You know I don't want to. I'd love nothing more than to kill you where you stand after slowly torturing you. But..."

"But nothing. You're empty."

Rose's soulless eyes (why they were soulless considering he was a soul in and of himself is a mystery) widened. So Danny knew. Or at least the boy thought he did."You wanna test that theory?" he bluffed leveling the gun at Danny's torso. Right at his heart. Danny stepped forward.

"You.. had better not come any closer," Rose warned. "One more step and I'll kill you. Richard Rose always does what he says he's gonna do and..."

Danny silenced him by stepping forward. Rose couldn't keep the pretense going any longer. Danny was two steps away from being in range to punch. Rose fell backwards and turned around diving and then rolling forward,and throwing a beam of ectoplasm to knock Danny back, which worked for about a nanosecond. His EE beams had never been the strongest. But it was time enough for him to reload. He jammed Jane's loading chamber out and spun it around...

Danny was charging and would be on him in a second at most...

The chamber stopped spinning...

Rose gave it a push...

_**WWHHSSHH!**_

The loading chamber fell to the ground, cut from the rest of the gun, and cut in half as the chi-charged wind severed it. The faint nasally cry of "Wind Blade" echoed an instant eternity after the attack happened. Rose turned around and saw Kaze...

_**SKFFQUECLKK!**_

Danny stopped in his tracks as Rose's severed head fell to the ground and rolled next to his broken gun, stopping face up. He lowered the ax and his head and sighed. Then Rose's body began to dissipate and Danny was silently thankful it was over."Heh heh heh heh heh heh..."A chill shook Danny. He looked at Rose's dismembered head. Rose just smiled. "Hard thing to kill a man. To take away everything he ever was and ever will be..."

Danny's eyes widened.

"Good thing I'm already dead," Rose's head said as it finally faded away...

For a long while nothing happened. Danny stood there, thinking of his journey so far, and thinking of where he must go next. And wondering things. Where was his sister? How had Kaze survived getting shot by Rose? He noticed that Kaze's right arm was bare--the pink gauntlet was gone... Well. One mystery solved. Because even through the identity-concealing mask, Danny could tell Kaze was dealing with the fury and grief of loss.

"Your gauntlets are living beings, aren't' they?" Danny asked.

Kaze just nodded.

"What happened?"

"I was trying to distract him from you, and then get away from his shots by moving fast. But I wasn't fast enough..."

"Is it...?"

"She'll live," Kaze interrupted. "She's gone somewhere to heal."

Danny frowned at this--out of sympathy. Neither hero said a word, they just walked together. It may have been an hour, maybe only five minutes, as grief and frustration can distort time, but eventually the two came upon the clearing where Vlad's old cabin stood. Kaze looked up into the sky. "Say. We can both fly, so why are we walking?"As if on cue, Danny detransformed. "Because I'm tired, and because we've already reached our destination. Or mine, at least. You can fly on back if you want."

"Something in the cabin you're not telling us about?"

"It holds a painful piece of history for me. But that isn't why I came here." Danny replied. "I think I've finally figured out why my mother doesn't go near it." Danny secretly hoped he was dead wrong. But he was not...

**oooo**

Timmy flew with Cosmo's aid back towards the Haven Base that Maddie Fenton had established as a ghost-fighting splinter-cell on the borders of ghost-held lands. He sighed, and wished Wanda were there. Not aloud, though, as Cosmo was just dumb enough to actually do it. Yeah, she would live, as he'd told Danny. But that didn't mean seeing her almost die was any less painful...

**Flashback (Screen goes wavy and color desaturated)**

**BANG!**

The shot from Rose's gun rang out and slammed into his right fore-arm, which was protected by Wanda. Normally her innate magical powers would have shielded her from the dark energy in Rose's projectile, but whatever Casualty Jane shot, it was powerful enough to inflict it's evil on even a Fairy Godparent of Wanda's caliber.

"AUUGHH!" Timmy yelled as he gasping in surprise and pain. But those gave way to panic when he realized that Wanda was the one causing said pain by writhing and twitching on his arm. He unfastened her and threw her to the ground... And had absolutely no idea what to do... "Wanda!" he screamed.

"Wanda! No, baby! Please don't leave me!" echoed Cosmo, who had poofed himself back into fairy from and hovered over his wife. The pink gauntlet became a pink haired fairy in a small fizzle rather than a word-filled poof...

"Cosmo, you have to do something!" Timmy yelled. Wanda had been with him for over three years, and had been with him through some tough situations. His evil babysitter; his even more evil science teacher. A swarm of evil cockroaches. His evil dentist. His evil Imaginary Friend. Evil Anti-Fairies. The evil Arch-nemises of his favorite superhero The Bronze Kneecap and Negachin. The evil alien Mark Chang from Yugopotamia. The his even more evil betrothed Mandai... Yeah, he and Wanda and Cosmo had put up with a lot of evil over the past few years. And to see her suffering like she was tore Timmy apart. "Wanda... Cosmo, use you magic, try and heal her!"

Cosmo complied. No effect.

"I _wish_ the negative energy was gone..."

POOF... but no change.

He was running out of time. Wanda had finally managed to contain the plague in her right hand, but she was using most of her magic and then some. And Timmy didn't think any sort of tourniquet would slow down this sort of infection--an evil rot that ate away at the soul...

Then an idea occurred to Timmy. "Cosmo, give her your magic. As much as you can. Open the door to Fairy World and plug into the Big Wand if you have to, just give it to her!"

"But Timmy... what if I give too much!"

"That's exactly what I'm counting on--now DO IT!"

"Okay."Cosmo replied hesitantly.

He leveled his wand at his wife, and Timmy handed him hers as well. A faint aura the color of Cosmo's hair radiated out from the two wands and joined the pink aura around Wanda... "AAAHHUGHHGHUGHHH!" Wanda screamed in pain. The extra magic had little effect as the dark force fought on, eating it's way through Wanda's very soul."Timmy..." there was a horrible trepidation in Cosmo's voice.

"Keep going."

AAAAAAAHHHHHNNNUUGHHGAAAGUH!

The flow of magic got faster as Cosmo became more worried. (Timmy had always found that nothing motivated Cosmo as much as fear for Wanda. Fear of losing her)... Soon Wanda and Rose's attack had reached a stalemate. But all was not well. There gets to a point where something just cannot be compressed any more. This applies to both gases and tangible forms of energy. This is why it is physically impossible for a meta human with a physical body to cross a certain plateau. Energy seeks expansion, just as compressed CO2 would...

And this was also the behavior of the malevolence threatening Wanda. She couldn't' push it any farther, so all the magic Cosmo was now pumping into her was not going to contain the infection, but rather it was making Wanda swell up like a balloon. And balloons pop. As did Wanda! The explosion knocked Cosmo skyward and Timmy flat on his but, but it didn't make much noise. The pink-haired fairy now rained down as pink confetti. But there was no longer Rose's dark bullet for her to fight. She's need time to recover, and Cosmo looked afraid as he returned...

"_**Make my day!" Timmy heard Danny's voice--and Rose's. They were arguing over something.**_

"Poof her to Fairy World," Timmy--now once again Kaze-- told Cosmo.

Then he ran off to see what the commotion was about. By the time he got there, Danny was charging at Rose, who was diving away as if scared. And Timmy suddenly understood why: his gun was empty.

And Timmy had the perfect shot... Rose opened his loading chamber and Timmy knew he had to strike. "DOUBLE WIND BLADE!" he yelled...

**End Flashback (screen becomes wavy again and returns to full color)**

**Vlad's Palace**

The excessively fat ghost slowly floated out of the portal and hovered up to Vlad's throne. He mumbled something to himself--it sounded like mild profanities mixed with the names "Brian" and "Mayor West..."

Vlad sighed. This one looked pretty stupid. "Please state your name and any powers or special talents."

The man snapped out of his stupor and looked raised is hand as if swearing an oath. "My name is Peter, and I have a problem." The fat ghost, said. Suddenly he seemed to realize where he was. "HOLY CRAP! This isn't ecto-holics anonymous!" He looked around and could find nothing familiar. "LOIS!" He yelled.

Vlad's annoyance quadrupled. "Excuse me, peon. "

"It's Peter," the ghost corrected.

Vlad ignored him. "You are in my palace, and I am recruiting for my ghost army.""An army of ghosts, eh?" asked Ghost Peter. "What for?"

"To take over the world. Duh." Vlad felt as if this ghosts stupidity was intoxicating.

"Sounds nice. I owned my own nation once. Smack-dab in the middle of Rhode Island."

"I'm thrilled. Now please listen. I have a few more questions, Peter. How did you die?""I was playing cards with Death, and I lost. So I used my hold-out Uzi. He wasn't too happy about that."

Vlad just arched an eyebrow. "Do you have any special talents?"

"Well. I can play the piano like Leonardo da Vinci when I'm drunk."

There was an awkward silence. Vlad, blinked, started to say somethng, sputtered, then stopped himself... He wondered if it would be too obvious to point out that da Vinci didn't play the piano. In the end, he decided the answer was yes...Rasing his hand, he forced Ghost Peter break apart and meld with his own ectoplasm. He always did this. Worthless people were fuel. Worthwhile people were recruits... There very, very few worthwhile people. "There has to be a better way to expand my ranks," Vlad sighed, exasperated. Besides, he already had someone who could play the piano while drunk. He thought the name had been Klipspringer or something equally ridiculous.

Just that moment, the Masters Portal closed as the ex-Nazi ghost general Fox Rommel walked into the room. "General," Vlad acknowledged.

"Fuhrer,"Rommel addressed Vlad, "I have received word from a reliable source that Richard Rose has failed in his mission to exterminate the interloper. What's more, reports tell of a white-haired ghost child delivering the final blow. I fear your enemy has returned at last.""I know," Vlad said evenly. "With the power of my amulet, I can feel him even now. And he is about to learn that you don't have to be a ghost hunter to face my wrath. You need only be a Fenton." Something made Vlad quite angry as he said this. Rommel just assumed it was bad memories. In reality, Vlad was just normally like this--simply very good at concealing it.

Vlad motioned, and a spectral Vulture carried one of the seeing stones over and sat it in the pedistal by his throne. (How a half ounce bird carried a five pound crystal is lost to time. Perhaps it had something to do with being dead already.)

"_Hanmah Sural _Daniel." Vlad said...

**Back in Colorado**

Danny didn't like at all what he was seeing. The cabin was mostly dark, except in one room. Danny had only seen the front parlor and the hall that led to the helicopter when he had been there before, and that had been months ago. And all too much had happened during that time. So he didn't really know what room it was. But he had a hunch he would not like what he found in the house. He made his way to the door, and phased intangible and invisible through the door and found himself in the same room he remembered, minus the trophies on the walls. Too tired to fly outright, Danny did a combination of tiptoeing and hovering down the hall... The room with the light was the third door on the right, and not only light, but music as well was coming through it.

He sidled along the wall, being careful not to make a noise. Finally he got close enough to make out the words to the songs. It wasn't one he'd ever heard before, but it sounded very old. Something about battling alone...

The sad music stopped briefly and began what sounded like a chorus.

_Alone again..._

_Yeah. Just alone again..._

_Trapped in here like an old shut-in._

_As always: Alone, again..._

The words trailed off into faint humming; the music wasn't recorded. Someone was in the house. And Danny's heart felt as though it simultaneously exploded and imploded.

Because the voice was Jazz's. Danny used some of his slight reserves of ghost power to remain invisible and phase through the door into the room...

Jasmine Fenton. If she could be called that. A wreck she was, no doubt. Danny's fury became a tempest within him. What could have done this to her? What could have taken his strong willed independent sister--who alone out of the entire student at body Casper High was immune to Penelope Spectra's "counseling"...

How could Jazz of all people end up like this. Danny noticed she was staring at a portrait on the wall. Two portraits, actually. Their father, and himself. At this he lost all control and phased visible. _She thinks I'm dead. They all did. All of them except Mom._

Jazz looked over at Danny. She seemed to see right through him. "Hi, Danny," she said. "Leonardo and Mikey are coming over for tea and crackers. They might bring Splinter along too so you can eat and be HAPPY (Jazz said the word very angrily) just like all my other PEN PALS!"

She just went on smiling. If it had been anyone else, it would have been funny--in the mean-spirited way humans laughed at each-other's problems--but on Jazz, no amount of apathy could make it humorous. Not if one knew how far she'd fallen.

"Jazz. Mike, and Leo, and Splinter are fictional characters! It's me, your brother!"

"Oh I know. And technically you are fictional characters too as well and also. ISN"T THAT RIGHT, CHALTAB!" Jazz screamed the last part at the sky. No answer came and Jazz began to sing again. So Danny went over and shook her. "Jazz. It's me. It's really Danny! Please snap out of it!"

The hole in Danny's heart from the murders of Valerie and his father--yes, he'd come to accept Val's death as another stain on Vlad's hands--widened by several miles. "Good boy, Danny. None of the other figments have managed to touch me. You're the best one yet. Now if you'll excuse me, I'll go back to imagining that you and Dad aren't dead. My offer of cookies and tea still stands."

"I thought you said crackers." Danny replied, beginning to tear up. He hated this. He hated Vlad. He just wanted to leave. But he had to reach his sister... Somehow.

And perhaps he did. Because after he answered, Jazz's eyes flashed wide as saucers and then became terribly angry.

"NO! THEY'RE COOKIES, YOU DEAD BROTHER! GO AWAY! YOU'RE DEAD! DEAD! DEAD!"

Jazz started slapping Danny and Danny took it. What else could he do without hurting his sister even more. _If that were possible_, his pessimistic side added. Then she pulled out a frying pan... (Why she has one in her bedroom is lost to time) and swung at Danny, who took the hint and ran away, with new-found grief-fueled power. Twin white rings slid around him and he was suddenly Danny Phantom again, and he sped away towards Haven Base. Where he would have to confront his mom.

And he didn't notice as Jazz's tragic rage finally wore off and she sat there. Still _Alone..._

But this time, instead of deadness in her eyes, there was a sad confusion. And a tear ran down her cheek. "Danny?" she whispered.

* * *

**Author's Note: I wanted to include quite a bit more, but this chapter is longer than I had expected, So I'm dividing it up here. Sorry.**

**And bonus NO-Prize to anyone who can figure out what universe "Klipspringer" is from.  
**


	16. Rattling the Cage

Author's Note: _I am rather unsatisfied with this chapter. Maybe it's just my being half asleep though. I don't know if it's really all that bad, or if I am just imagineing it. Also,I figured I should warn you that I used a rather severe curse later in this chapter. If anyone is offended, I will remove it, but I felt it was essential to conveying Sam's mood, so it is there for now. Thanks for your time._

_

* * *

_Danny found himself halfway back to the base his mother called home before he knew it. He swooped down into the cemetary, but instead of using the security system,he just phased through the ground and went inside, as the ghost chatcher was still lying across the ground from earlier.Danny was undoubtedly furious at his mother. She had lied to him about Jazz. She had hidden the truth from him. And why? To protect him? As if he wasn't capable of handling it! Why did she feel the need to shield him?—knowing that he was who he was—the Phantom child. Amity's superhero.

But when he saw the slaughter that Rose's men had caused, his anger at his mother was quickly replaced by unadulterated rage. And it was directed at Vlad—the man who has sent the sadistic gunslinger. It was all Vlad's fault. Just like the murder of their father, and Valerie's death. And Tucker's. And Sam's transformation into somethng that Danny didn't like in the least. All of it was the fault of the cursed Plasmius.

Danny collapsed onto his knees as he saw them. Most of them, he did'n' even know their names. But Dash. This Dash was completely unlike the Dash he knew. He risked his life to save people. He fought... in a real war against real villains. Dash Baxter, star quarterback would never do that: this rat-hole world had changed everyone.

Danny barely noticed when Marty walked across the circular room and over to him. "Hey. I know it hurts to see a friend die." he comforted.

Suddenly Flare was there too. "Danny. You're mom is going to be fine."

"Fine?" Danny gasped. What a moron he had been! In his selfish rage he had forgotten his mom had been wounded by Vlad's wild-west lackey!

"Wha... her arm... It's..."

"I had to burn it off." Flare stated gravly.Danny felt faint again, as he had when he'd seen Valerie and his father die in the same two minutes. And the overload just caused him to pass out...

**oooo**

"Danny?" gasped Marty. "What is it with all the fainting? I think I radiate fainting energy or something." Marty sighed, dragging Danny to his feet as he and Flare struggled to get him to the infermary. Medical Bay... Whatever they called it. He did have to admit the fact that it was a ghost helping him do this task was a bit disconcerting.

"There, put him down on that bed," Flare said pointing to a vacant bed...

"What's going on?" Danny asked, awake now, and back in his human form. "Why are there so many in here?" Indeed, there were at least five or six, though the small size of the room and the fact most of the beds were full made it seem like much more.

"Danny, after you went and chased Rose, we were attacked again by a bunch of ghosts. Nobody died in the follow up, as far as I know, but we would have been in it deep if Kaze hadn't showed up and bailed us out."

"You should not be so brash," Flare added.

"Thanks for the lecture," Danny snapped.

"He's right, son," Maddie interjected. She seemed fine, standing upright and nothing out of place... except for the charred stump where her right arm had been.

"Mom..." Danny recognized. He still felt dizzy with sorrow, so he buried it deep. Wangst would have to wait for a time when he wasn't in mortal danger from an immortal enemy "If Flare was a pawn to lead Rose here, then that means Vlad didn't know where you were—until now. He knows and he'll be coming back."

"Danny, I am aware of that."

"Egh.. Dick killed Dash. But I got him." Danny mubled. He felt dizzy yet again.

"Danny, just because he's a sadistic monster does NOT give you the right to use such language."

"Um.. Er.." Danny snapped awake at the tone in his mother's voice. "His name... yeah.. His name was Richard Rose. Hence, 'Dick'... Right?"

Maddie's glare told him she wasn't buying it. "Danny, all this aside, we're going to have to move. Val... er.. Vlad has found us. We survived this time, but now that he knows where we are, he'll be sending more and more at us utnil we're overwhelmed. We have to find a new base."

Suddenly, Danny knew what to do.

"No." He said, setting straight up. The dizzyness was gone, replaced by an intensity fueled by his indignation. "We fight back. Running will only empower him. We either win this or die trying..."

Maddie's eyes showed a mixture of emotions... Hope, dispair, ridicule.

"Or," Danny continued, "That is my decision. You can do what you want, but I am done running away. If my fate is to die fighting Vlad, then fine by me. I'd rather be dead than..." Then he thought of his sister. And how being all ghost would be worse than insanity...

"Danny, what's wrong," his mother asked, concern filling her voice again. Mother's have that power, even if their son is from ten years in the past.

"Jazz." Danny replied. "Mom, why didn't you tell me? Were you trying to protect me? Do you know how insulting that is?  
"

"Danny, I didnt' think you needed to know..."

"ABOUT MY**_ SISTER?"_**

"This is why. I knew you would flip out and blame yourself for it."

"MYSELF? I'm not blaming myself, I am blaming Vlad..." Danny realized it was true. He had superficially accepted that Vlad was responsible. But he had the nagging sensation that HE could have done something. If only he had been there, it would have gone right. After all, the fact that he wasn't dead is what had caused Jazz to flip out...

"Danny, you aren't God." Maddie stated emphatically. "You can't do it all alone. It was unfair of me to expect so much of you. I wish I could make it up; no teen should suffer what you have, and no one should shoulder the pressure I've been putting on you. And as long as I have any fight in me—as long as I have a chance of hurting Vlad—I am going to do so."

"Thanks, Mom." Danny smiled for real, for the first time since coming to the future.

She placed her remainng hand on his shoulder. "No, Danny, Thank you."

**oooo**

**(For this medely of scenes, imagine the Gerudo Valley theme from **

**Zelda V: Ocarina of Time)**

The next few hours were spent prepping. It would take a few days for Vlad to mobilize any significant force, as ghost recruits tended to be rather stubborn, what with the posssible threat of obvlivion and all. But eventually Rommel would get them motivated, so Maddie and her people would have to work fast.

The first step was getting the Spectral Speeders ready to go into battle. There were only three of them; the one from the old lab in Amity Park, and two new models built during the ten years after that city was razed. (One of them had been converted from the Fenton Ghost RV Mark II) Danny and Marty worked on one together; Paulina and her cousin Dora worked on another. Maddie and Flare were fixing-up the third.Maddie found it odd, herself being a ghost hunter most of her life, to find the company of Flare so enjoyable. He seemed like a nice, sensible young man. Would have made a goos husband for Jazz, if she wasn't insane. Too bad he was twenty-years dead.

**oooo**

Danny turned a wrench clockwise, tightening the bolt that held something in place on a spectral speeder, and this something did something to something and the end result was that the metal vehicle weighed several tons and yet was able to float of the ground via ectoplasmic repulsors. (In laymans' terms, it used ghost juice to hover off the ground.) Said repulsors flared to life as Marty connected a hose to a valve and opened the valve. The speeder lifted up. So far so good.

**oooo**

It was several hours later still, about 2:30 in the morning, when the prep was complete. Minutemen they weren't, but Danny's mother still found her soldiers loyal. Now they had to go over the plan one last time, and then... pay their last respects to those who had fallen to Casualty Jane and others of her species. (In laymans' terms, guns.)

The Fenton's walked into the map room, accompanied by Flare and Marty. Danny was expecting high tech, but what he got **completely** surprised him. He had imagined the tall room-high hologram projectors, the 3D maps on high-tech tables... So when he simply saw a simple map of the United States—or what was left of that nation—printed on a simple atlas page, he goggled. Several circles marked things. Clusters of dots were armies.

"We're underfunded," Maddie explained.

"I can tell." Danny and Marty said simultaneiously. Danny had been doing his best to use the healing techniques he had learned from Raven to fix his mother's fighters up, but he had very limited sucess. Mostly because his lacking empathetic powers made it impossible for him to take the pain away, so the best he could do was fix some cuts and mend a few bones--very painfully.

"Gyzz." Maddie's tone was even. "Let's make sure everyone knows what to do. We have a lot of work to do and fast."

"OK," Gyzz sighed. "Our splinter groups in Aaron City and Endsville have given word that they will be able to support us. Their forces and our decoy group will converge on Amity Park where Vlad's forces have been stationed in search of Danny. Fight will take place, Yada-yada-yada. This should draw Vlad's army to Amity Park rather quickly, especially if..." He tapped a button on his belt, and suddenly a hologram disguise that resembled Danny appeared around him. "One of us wears this."

"Meanwhile," Maddie continued for Gyzz, "Myself, Danny, Marty, Qwan, and Flare—after he finishes whatever special attack he has planned at Amity—will procede in the light speeder to Wisconsin, where Danny will try and distract Vlad somehow long enough for Marty to get to the Time Machine.""Then what?" Danny asked."You'll have to improvise once you're back in the past." Gyzz said. "That's comforting."

"This is ridiculous!" a voice from the back insisted. It was Sam's. "It's suicide. Even if Danny, by some miracle, manages to get back to the past, he won't be able to change anything.""What would you have us do, then?" Maddie inquired."Mrs. Fenton, look. We can't _win_. You treat this like a war, but it isn't about victory—it's about surviving until we have a way to destroy ghosts. If you throw it all away now, then this stalemate could last forever—or worse. Vlad could... no... he WILL wipe us out."

"Sam, they can't just keep running away everytime they're discovered. Eventually they''ll have nowhere to hide from him. And there is no time to evacuate this place. That would take days—days we don't have." Surprisingly, this well thought out response came from Danny.

"Danny, quit it with your stupid idealism. Not every problem can be solved by your special powers and your goddamn thermos! Get it through your head that this is not another of your child-hood battles. This is life and death."

"And it wasn't back then?" Danny muttered. Sure, for her it wasn't, but he was the one constantly risking his life.

Sam just gave him her trademark glare.

"Sam," Maddie said calmly. "If you aren't going to help us, then leave. Find someplace to hide, and stay there. We are going to do this because we are out of options. And if you would turn your back on us after all this time, then so be it. But you cannot convince me not to go through with this."

Sam said nothing. She just turned and walked away. Then she turned back and walked over to Danny. Smiling, she pulled her ax from her belt. "I heard you did good with this earlier Danny. You're going to need all the help you can get."Her voice bitter, she handed him the ax and left."That's one more I've lost because of you." Danny whispered. Vlad would never hear it, but if Danny had his way, he would make Vlad _feel_ it.

**oooo**

"We are gathered here to remember and bury those of us who have departed. They fought bravely to the last." Maddie said shortly after standing up. From the way she moved her right stump, Danny could tell she was having phantom-limb syndrome.+

"We remember them because they fought with us. And died beside us. Dash Baxter. Football player. Father. Murdered in sadistic cruelty, in the line of duty, defending this base from invaders.

Gentson Carver. Former hacker. He was one of our bests weapon specialists. He will be missed, mostly for his disposition—always cheerful. Always cracking a joke and lightening the mood.Mary Sue. Our team all star. She succeded in everything she ever attempted, and cheated death too many times to count. She was gorgeous, radiant, despite being severly beaten as a child by her father and abandoned by her mother. Her excellence knew no limits, and now at last the grave claims her. She will be missed and sadly mourned by us all for days, even though most of us barely knew her.

And Aiko Kondo, who gave her life trying to rescue Mary's. Our gifted medic who will be missed on and off the battlefield...Let us hope that Vlad does not have his way with their souls." Maddie finished somberly. She had heard of what had happened to those ghosts whom Vlad could not control. He tore them apart... and made them part of him..

With the eulogies finished, the four who had died were lowered into the earth in wooden boxes far too small to be used for this purpose. Collin Roberts, the team Terra-kinetic, lowered dirt and rock into the hole, and erected a head stone with the four names.

"It is time," Maddie said. The sun was about to rise.

* * *

+Phantom Limb Syndrome is the experience of an amputee or someone who has otherwise lost a limb experiencing sensations as if that limb was still there. 


	17. Strategies of War

**A/N: **_w00t people, I have officially given the story a new name. Well, at least a Sub-Title. Anyway, I hope it attracts more DP fans who like the BttF movies. Other than that, I don't have much to say here except I'm FINALLY getting to the climactic epic battle. Yay!_

_

* * *

_**Monday, April 6, 2015 6:14 AM  
**

"It is time," Maddie said. It was just before dawn, and the sky over the Haven Compound was finally beginning to brighten after the long night. Maddie looked over at her ragtag group of men and women who had been fighting the ghost armies for the past ten years. And a tear fell from one eye. This was the night it would end. They would either destroy Vlad, or die trying.

**oooo**

It took about fifteen minutes before the trio of Specter Speeders were airborne, but Maddie was glad they were. She had opted to sit on the top of the Speeder that had formerly been the second ghost RV, on the high deck where she could man the Ecto-Goop canon in case a scout patrol found them. Everything was quiet: it was the proverbial calm before the storm. And there was going to be a a storm. Was there ever!

Maddie noticed Flare, the pyrokinetic ghost that Danny had met in his trip to the past, float up beside her on her left, and Kaze, the young but mysterious metahuman they had just met float up beside him. She no longer doubted Kaze intentions; if he was to betray them, he could have done so when Rose was there. She only worried that he might not be so capable when the fighting started to get intense, which it certainly would.

"Mrs. Fenton," Flare started his Japanese accent barely noticeable, "Kaze and I been talking..."

"And we were wondering if we can trade places. I want to go with you and Danny to Wisconsin, and Flare will stay in Amity Park to help fight the army. Is that OK."

"That should work, actually," Maddie said. "I... No, never mind. This is probably for the best. Kaze, you'll be with me and Danny; Flare, you stay with the diversion group..." What Maddie didn't say is why she agreed so easily. She had always been mistrustful, even of the ghosts that didn't seem evil. She blamed it on her roots. After all, she was first and foremost a ghost hunter.

**oooo**

Paulina scanned the horizon for the signs that she was getting closer to her home. The duo of Specter Speeders she had been allotted should be there at any moment. Suddenly, a whooshing noise filled her ears and another figured was right outside the open window of her speeder. "Flare, right?" she asked.

"Hey. Maddie said that Kaze and I are going to trade. I'm staying in Amity while Kaze fights with the rest up in Wisconsin."

"That makes more sense than the original plan," Paulina stated. "Dora, can we fit one more back there?" Paulina glanced to the back where her cousin and several other ghost-fighters were sitting together cramped up, but not entirely without space.

"_Lo creo, mi prima," _Dora confirmed.

"Get in, then." She said to Flare, "No point in you wasting your strength flying all the way to Wyoming."

Flare nodded. "Thank you."

It took about 20 minutes more, but the two speeders and the soldiers inside them found their way to the Town Between the Lakes. It looked as it always did these days. A ruin. A smoldering shell of a town that had long since been abandoned by everyone who could abandon it. Sure, some humans remained, and some even lived among the ghosts—among the dead. But for the most part, the city was deserted by those with a pulse. Whatever Vlad had done to the world under his domain made it a perpetual night there, as cliché as that may be. So despite the sun's rising, no solar light would guide them. They would fight by darkness, like all those who opposed Vlad. And darkness was the specialty of those that go bump in the night.

Ghosts, on the other hand, thrived in the bombed out shell of a town between Lake Amity and Park Lake. And Vlad's rather stalwart force of spectral soldiers he had sent here patrolled the streets, searching for some evidence that the rumors of that halfa's return were true. Paulina chuckled. She had once had a crush on Danny Phantom. And now, she was fighting for him—so that he would have a chance to succeed where all other superhumans and ghost hunters had failed. As selfish as she had been as a teen, she couldn't help but see the irony in what was happening now.

"Prepare the main guns. Flare, get ready to light them up."

"I've been ready. I've been waiting for payback for ten years. Here goes everything. **_WAKE-UP CALL!_**"

With that exclamation, a swirling cord of flame spiraled down to the surface of the planet, tearing through the burnt-out husks of buildings and exploding in the faces of unsuspecting ghosts in the service of Vlad. When it hit the ground in a swirl pattern, it exploded, lighting up the city and burning away battlefield obstacles. But mostly, searing those searching for Danny, and the ones protecting them. It brought a dead city to life.

It truly was a wake up call.

"I have visual contact with the Endsville and Aaron City forces," Paulina said. "Dora, get down there and start send some ghosts back where they belong. I will coordinate with the other groups and join you in a minute!"

"Good luck, Paulina," Dora said as she leaped out of the speeder along with the rest of the soldiers, using the hovering platforms that her old friend Valerie had once used. They all brandished Soul Sabers, Dora's double edged as usual.

"Banzai!" came a shout from a few feet away. Gyzz also jumped from his speeder, suing a quartet of mechanical legs protruding from his backpack to break his fall. And with the touch of a button, he turned on his hologuise and looked like Danny. The trap was set..

**oooo**

"Lord Vlad!" came shouts from another room of his towering palace..

Vlad hovered over and met Rommel half way. "What is it?"

"Sir, Amity Park is under attack, and early reports are saying the halfa has been sighted there.

"Daniel, I'm surprised." Vlad shook is head. "You would think that he would be smarter than that by now. He knows he can't beat me with brute force and yet every time he tries just that. Fine. I will play his game, because I've always played it better." Vlad smiled evilly. "In fact, I've always played every strategy with a straighter face than that insolent child."

"I will go to Amity Park and confront him, then?" Rommel asked, comprehending.

"Of course. Teach him—and his mother—that nobody fights Vlad Plasmius so foolishly."

"But what if the force in 'Calamity Park' is a diversion, my liege? Would you have me leave this place undefended?"

"The defenses of this palace are more than sufficient, and even if they weren't..." Vlad stood up, bringing the ghost amulet, which he had recently had embedded in a gauntlet, up to level with his head. It began to glow, surrounding him with a red aura."I am perfectly able to obliterate them on my own."

**oooo**

Danny, Marty, Qwan, Maddie, and Timmy Turner in the guise of Kaze, crouched down in their open-top speeder. "There they go." Marty said.

"There must be more than 5000 of them..." Danny gasped. Ghosts. Hundreds upon hundreds of ghosts, perhaps soldiers in past wars, police officers, firemen, or normal civilians killed doing their job, or screwing it up—all of them recruited into Vlad's army through the power of the same amulet that the woman named Jinx had brought to his town. Danny knew. He knew because of the same glowing red eyes that Kitty and Ember—and later Sam and Paulina—had shown through their helmets, their masks, their glasses. An army of thousands, all controlled by his arch nemesis.

"I don't understand," Maddie sighed. "If what you told me of Jinx is true, then theres no way Vlad should be able to control so many... If she could only control two without going insane..."

"But, mom, Vlad _is_ insane. And he is also FAR more versed in ghost powers than Jinx ever was. She had been possessed once in the past but Vlad's very DNA is half ghost."

"Really?" Kaze asked.

"Yeah. Don't you watch the theme song? It explains it really well, I think. Guy and Butch did a great job," Qwan insisted.

The quintet of freedom fighters looked out over Vlad's palace, its squared outer wall towering above.

"Which wall would you say was built last, of those four?" Marty suddenly asked.

"Um. The one that's crumbling, I'd say," Danny sighed. Chaltab never could resist a fourth wall joke, and sometimes Danny hated him for it. Sure enough, one of the towering fortress walls around the palace fell to the ground in a pile of rubble.

"Well," Maddie sighed, "That Deus ex Machina solved the problem of how we get into the compound without getting blasted..."

"Now we just have to wait for the soldiers to clear out. I'm going ghost!"

**oooo **

"YOU DID WHAT?" Vlad yelled at the diminutive card-dealing ghost in front of him.

"I made a deal with Saladin, sir, that if he would knock down your south wall, I would enhance his strength and, in the unlikely event you are ever defeated, give him back his empire of old."

"And who authorized you to make such a deal?" Vlad screamed into the face of Deal, the ghost most infamous, not for combat skills or special attacks. No, he was infamous for making incredibly, horribly, mind-bogglingly awful, bad deals. A deceased Vegas card-shark, Deal had turned his afterlife around when he discovered his not-at-all-fair exchange powers allowed him to manipulate people into making deals that ultimately sucked, but seemed very tempting.

"I wasn't aware I needed authorization," the ghost smirked. "Besides, I tried to make a deal that would ensure victory in the upcoming battle... and Rommel punched me in the face."

Vlad sighed deeply. Sure, he wasn't particularly worried, but having a big pile of rubble where one of your walls should be was an open invitation to every metahuman and ghost hunter in the Midwest to barge in and bother Vlad with their pitiful attempts to "Destroy the evil Overlord Valerie and her ghost hoards"...

That last thought actually made Vlad laugh, something he hadn't done much since going insane. Well, except of course in the maniacal variations.

"_Hanmah Soukta _Rommel," Vlad said into his pocket communication crystal. Rommel's face appeared in it.  
"Yes, my liege?"

"Tell your pal Saladin that as punishment for his deal, he will stay here and guard the castle instead of conquering and pillaging. Tell him to command, oh, say, about 300 men. There should be enough left to crush the Phantom Child and his friends in Amity."

"Yes, sire."

"Master Vlad," Deals started before Vlad could toss him out, "Actually, I have a proposition for you."

"The answer is no," Vlad spat, "but let's hear it anyway."

**oooo**

"Most of them are gone," Danny announced. "There are a few hundred left."

"Then we press the attack now," said Maddie.

The five quickly made their way down the hill they had camped on, riding in the open-top Specter Speeder. "Maddie," Marty said, "Are you sure we can do this? They have like sixty for every one of us.

"I have a plan," said Kaze, and flew away.

"Did he just abandon us?" Danny asked.

"Looks that way," replied Qwan.

o--

"Cosmo" Timmy whispered. "I need you to do something." Finally, they were a sufficient distance away from the rest.

"Sure thing, good buddy," he said, poofing into his fairy form.

"I wish that I had the greatest comic book ever made!"

"You mean the _COMBINED ADVENTURES OF BICEP-MULLET MAN AND THE DISCO DANDELION!" _The fairly blurted as he made that comic book appear in a puff of smoke, it's namesake duo of heroes on the cover in all their psychedelic glory.

"No, no no!" Timmy yelled. "I want the Ultimate Decades Crimson Chin Uber-Crossover."

"Oh... THAT greatest comic ever," Cosmo sighed. And then it was.

"Thank you. Now, open a portal to the comic world and unleash the Crimson Chin of each decade—in wish form!"

"That's another 10-4, Good buddy!"

**oooo**

Maddie hacked her Soul Saber down and sent another ghost to the ghost zone, and three more popped up. She rolled away from their blows and cut horizontally, causing fluid ectoplasm to spray out of their abdomens. "Go away!"

A massive blow smashed her in the face and she went flying, only to be caught by Danny. "You alright, Mom?"

"Fine, Danny. Go! You have to get inside that castle."

"Right." And he was gone.

Maddie pulled out her gun—the Amityville Horror—and began blasting away at the ghost who had hit her, a hun of a man. "Eat ectoplasmic lead, Atilla!

After nearly half a clip, the ghost succumbed to the assault and fell over, slowly dissolving. But Marty could only do so much with the gun turret, and she and Qwan were quickly being overwhelmed by the multitude of hellish hosts.

"Wind Cutter!" came a nasally voice from above, and a sudden gale knocked over some enemies while a duo of blades rend a group of Saladin's men in two.

_Here come the Crimson Chins!_

And suddenly, the sky was alive with red as 8 figures in red outfits and a single hero in a silver bodysuit swooped in and began to lay waste.

"Is it just me, Mrs. Fenton, or are those the Crimson Chins from the comics?" Qwan asked as he decapitated anther ghost with a Soul Saber.

"Let's just be grateful for the help... HAIYAH!" Maddie said, then barked as she rammed her blade through the face of an incoming ghost, disintegrating it. "And hope we're buying Danny enough time..."

**oooo**

Danny found a door in the floor of the outer grounds of the palace, and decided it must have been a vent of some sort. He also decided that it would be as good a place to enter as any, so he had blasted it open and fallen in. But he hadn't gone ten steps when a wall appeared in front of him in what had been a hallway a moment ago.

"There is no escape for YOU, ghost boy!" Came a familiar voice from behind him.

"Technus," Danny said while turning... "Or not.."

It wasn't Technus, but rather a short midget ghost with very large shiny teeth. "I am not "Technus, Bookie! I am Dr. Bender, THE TOOTH GHOST! Prepare to feel the fury of bad dental work!"

Suddenly, a bunch of skeletons somehow found their way into the room, and their teeth began to fly out of their skulls. "Prepare to DIE!" And the teeth flew at Danny..

"AAAAHHHHHHH!"


	18. Friends Among the Dead

**A/N: **_Sorry for my absence. I can offer only a lame excuse. But I don't have one, so I'll forgo that and get on with the chapter.  
_

**Time Phantom: Chapter Nineteen**

The teeth flew at Danny with unstoppable force, and he had no time to dodge. They were getting closer... Closer...

They where there, plowing through him... but not hurting.

"Oh yeah." Danny chuckled. "I forgot. Solid objects can't hurt me when I'm in ghost form."

"Then what am I to do?" the Tooth Ghost asked.

"You attack me with a phenomenally stupid idea and you don't even have a back-up plan? You're like the second lamest enemy I have ever faced..."

The tooth ghost arched an eyebrow. "Who was the_ first,_ **lamest **enemy that you have ever faced?"

"Um..."

**FLASHBACK**

Danny looked up at the ghost towering over him. "Um. Who are you? And please say you're benevolent!"

"I am ABE! The perfect ghost! I shall conquer the world of the living and subjugate it's leaders to my will! I am super strong, invulnerable, super fast, and I can shoot laser beams from my eyes! I can inhale and exhale at a capacity no mortal man can match!"

"So much for hoping you'd be a good guy," Danny sighed.

"You think you can beat me!" Abe pistoned a fist out so fast Danny didn't know what hit him until he peeled himself off the brick wall he'd been slammed into.

"Ouch. OK, Mr. Abe... Do you have any weaknesses?" Danny staggered forward, getting dangerously close to him.

"Of course. I am powerless against the letters C and D! But you will never find them fast enough to defeat me, because you will die soon!"

Danny looked down at the emblem on his chest. "I never liked this thing anyway," he said, peeling it off and sticking it on Abe's abdomen.

"What... NO!" Abe began to burst into flames, and then ran off, wailing in agony.

"Wait! Come back!" Danny yelled, taking out the long-range thermos. "It's a good thing my dad built this thing." Danny aimed it at the distant ghost, channeled his energy into it, and fired, stopping Abe in his tracks and sucking him into the thermos.

"No! I cannot be defeated!" Abe yelled as he was sucked in.

"That was easy."

**END FLASHBACK**

"Wow. Sounds bad," the tooth ghost agreed. "Now, if you will permit me, I will DESTROY YOU!" Suddenly, the ghost pulled a giant phantom toothpick from seemingly nowhere.

"Eh... That looks like it's going to hurt," Danny gulped. He pulled out the Fenton Axe that Sam had given him. It was time to chop some wood! The toothpick and ax clashed, and to Danny's surprise, the toothpick held, and forced the ax backwards. "What gives? This is supposed to cut through ghost stuff."

The Tooth Ghost's eyes glowed red and an equally red aura flashed around him. "Lord Vlad gives us power beyond measure! Puny fugitive, child. You and your imperfect teeth are no match for myself!"

And then, suddenly more teeth surrounded him. But this time, they were ghost teeth. Danny's eyes increased by 3.4 sizes, and he quickly chopped at the Tooth Ghost with his ax, trying to cleave him back to the Ghost Zone before he was full of holes...

The two clashed, toothpick low, and deflected by the ax. Danny swung it high, but the corpulent tooth ghosts blocked that with speed unbecoming to his size.

"Go down already!" Danny yelled, hurling the ax at him. But a wall of ghost molars shot up, surrounding Dr. Bender, and blocking the ax and knocking it from his hands... And if that wasn't bad enough, phantom canine teeth began a quick strike to impale him...

"AAAHH!" Danny screamed again! And again, he was spared when there seemed to be no hope. He opened his eyes, which he hadn't even realized he had closed. And was surprised to see...

"Run, Danny Phantom!" yelled the Box Ghost. "I have forgiven your past transgressions against all that is square and cardboard! I will fight the dentally inclined version of myself!" Danny then noticed that the Box Ghost had a box.. full of teeth.

"You stopped them... for me?"

"Of course. Vlad is my enemy as well! Now go!"

"Right." Danny turned and used a beam of ectoplasm to blow down the wall that had slammed down to lock him in the room, and proceeded down the hallway behind, grabbing the ax as he went.

**0000**

"Turbo Wind Tunnel!" Timmy yelled, hurling a tornado of destructive power at the ghosts they were fighting. The Chins turned out to be quite helpful, too, as their super Chintastic powers prevented the ghosts from over-shadowing them. And between the eight decades represented along with the standard Red Spandex Chin, the nine were kicking ghost butt. _**"BANZAI BUBBLE!"**_

The wind tunnel dissipated, leaving some ghosts stunned, and Maddie followed up with some well-placed cuts with her Soul Saber, reducing them to nothing. "Kaze, thank you for the help." She said through the bubble.

"No problem," replied Timmy. "WHOA! Watch out!"

**0000**

Maddie glanced to the side in time to see the charging leader of the garrison, bearing down on here with a quartet of Arabic-looking swords in his four hands, "Who dares attack Saladin!" It yelled.

"Halt, ectoplasmic malefactor!" Maddie yelled, dodging the ghosts attacks with his swords, and deflecting where she could with her soul saber, trying to get a clear window to cut. Three arms cut down at her crouched form, and she dive-rolled under a horizontal slash, then shot to her feet and began a flurry of slashes trying to find an open spot and rend the ancient warlord in two...

Then he started twirling his blades, General Grievous-style, forcing Maddie to back away. "I conquered your Middle East during my life, and have been grated far more power in death! Now you die, infidel!"

Maddie rolled out of the way as all four swords came down, the last one cutting inches from the stump of her maimed arm. But Saladin had given her the opening she needed...

Or so she thought.. She tried to set up and stab him, but found her self unable to move... But why?

"Mrs. Fenton!" yelled Qwan. And then the air in front of her distorted as a giant ghost ceased allowing light through it. And she stared into the dagger-like teeth of a werewolf, red eyes glowing above his slobbering maw...

Wulf.

"You!" She hissed. "You tried to eat my son!"

**0000**

"Darn it, Timmy," the young Turner yelled at himself, after seeing Mrs. Fenton pinned down by the wolf ghost and having her head mere inches from being sheared off by its giant four-armed leader.

A soldier lashed out at him, and he dodge away, frying it with a blast of chi. "I'm coming...!" And he ran towards Maddie. Qwan was trying to get there as well, but he was surrounded...

And suddenly so was Timmy, as a quintet of pirate-looking spirits that the Chins let slip through their advance leaped in front of him. "I don't have time for this! Turbulent Tornado!" Timmy yelled, stealing another attack from Maho-Mushi. A torrent of pink energy surrounded him, twirling the ghosts in front of him into the whirlwind. The magenta energies tore the ghosts to shreds when Timmy willed it, and with a thrust of this arms, he sent the attack towards Saladin and the struggling Maddie.

"Get out of the way!" he yelled at her...

**0000**

Maddie heard Kaze's cry, but couldn't see what, as she was busy trying to stop Wulf from eating her face off... She took a brief moment to wonder why Saladin hadn't cut her head off, and then...

But she didn't see the whirlwind attack flying at her... And if she didn't get away soon it would be too late... Then she remembered her sword was still in her hand, and flicked it up, cutting into the Wulf's tail. It fell to the ground and Wulf jerked back and let out a howl, Maddie took the opportunity to get away, just as the tornado crashed into the werewolf and Saladin.

BOOM!

An explosion rocked the courtyard as Saladin and Wulf were torn apart by the force of the attack. "Yes!" Maddie whooped as she struggled to her feet, finding her legs aching from the weight Wulf had been exerting on them.

"It looks like we're about done here," Qwan commented, surveying the destruction wrought by the Crimson Chins.

"Good." Maddie looked around. "Where is Marty?"

"I'm here!" he yelled, and Maddie heard the hum of a Specter Speeder behind her, and turned to see it lowering behind them, the Californian man inside.

"I want Kaze and five of those Crimson Chins to go help out in Amity Park. Qwan, myself, and you will stay here and find that Time Machine car of yours, and as soon as Danny settles things with Vlad, we'll send you back to the past to fix this whole mess..."

"Maddie." Marty's mood was somber. "No offense, I mean; Danny's good... but do you really think he can win? He doesn't think he's strong enough to stop this "Vlad" guy..."

"He can win. He has more power than he realizes." With that Maddie restated her orders. And they were followed.

**0000**

The room at the end of the hallway was large. Very large. And oddly, despite the size of the room, the aesthetics were unmistakably familiar. They reminded Danny of the Fenton Portal, though there was nothing that looked like a gateway in the room.

Danny surveyed the empty white space for a while... and when his eyes adjusted to the brightness, he noticed two closed metallic doors on the other end that looked like something you'd find on the Death Star. Suddenly, a panel he hadn't noticed on the wall opened up, revealing a window... And Valerie Gray. Or at least her body, as the decked-out "Empress Valerie" outfit was so gaudy it could only be the work of Vlad Masters.

"Welcome, Daniel." It said in Valerie's voice but Vlad's mannerisms.  
"Vlad!" Danny spat. "Come out and fight me, you monster! You've destroyed everything I care for! Why not hurry up and destroy me too! Or are you to afraid? Are going to hide up there in Valerie's skin forever?"

Danny's fury and sorrow caused his eyes to tear up. _No, none of that. I have to be strong now._

"I've been meaning to do just that, unless of course you've broken and are willing to join me now. Otherwise, I assure you you'll be dead shortly. Just like your idiot father."

Danny's voice got low and dangerous, but he spoke loudly and clearly. "I'd rather burn in hell than join you!"

Valerie's lips twisted into an artificial smile. "So you wish it. So shall it be," he said, mockingly, arrogantly.

But rather than Vlad coming down to fight him, the window slid shut quickly, as did the door behind him, and Danny just gasped and so did his ghost sense. And when he turned around, his heart sank as far down as it could go... lower even...

Because the ghost in the middle of the room leering violently at him was wearing a yellow shirt, a red beret, and glasses. It's monstrous green skin, Danny had seen before, and same with the pointed ears of his monstrous face.

The demon in front of Danny, staring at him with glowing red eyes...

...was his best friend...

"I hate you, Vlad," Danny whispered.

**0000**

"Paulina!" Dora screamed as her cousin was consumed in a blast of fire from one of the ghosts. Chaos reigned on the battlefield Amity Park had become, explosions going off everywhere, and the flash of Soul Sabers cascaded through the alleys and streets.

"Dora." Gyzz said, landing beside her, his mechanical backpack legs taking the impact. "You're needed on the west side down by the Lake Amity Docks..."

"Paulina..." Dora repeated.

"You don't mean..." Gyzz suddenly said in shock.

"No... she's OK... we just... got.. separated..." Dora insisted, shrugging off her tears. "I'll go..."

Taking her flying hover platform, Dora zipped above the chaos, dodging in and out of fire from the ghosts below. And soon enough she made it to Lake Amity. The Lake had been drained during the ten years since the Specter War started... its dry bed covered in burnt-out vehicles and human remains; a grim sight indeed. And in it's middle, the Aaron City group had gathered, fighting off Vlad's flanking forces.

Dora landed her board, briefly exchanged intel with the the officers on the ground, and then set her board to self destruct and jumped off as she hurled it into the throng of spectral soldiers. The explosion left many of them stunned long enough for the Aaron City group to cut them down.

_This is it_. She thought. This was where she would test her mettle, take her revenge. She fully expected herself to die...

"For you, Boots. Diego... Paulina! AAAHHRGH!" Dora charged in hacking and slicing her way through the ghosts, sending back to the ghost zone, and destroying their equipment wherever she could...

Hack.

Slash.

BOOM. The battle became a blur of motion and sound, as Dora let her instincts take over and acted automatically. Cutting, and hacking through the crowds. A death dance...

Against the dead.

**0000**

Tucker's ghost charged at Danny, swinging his fists, and lashing with his deformed claws, trying to pry the life out of the young man who used to be his best friend. "RAGH! RAUGH!" Yelled the demon that used to be Tucker Foley.

"Tucker!" Danny yelled, trying futilely to defend himself. "Please! I don't want to hurt you! Stop it! Fight Vlad!"

"You're just jealous! I'm stronger than you now! You get all the cool powers? Not ANY MORE!"

"Ahh!" Danny dropped towards the floor as Tucker lunged at him, and smacked into the wall. Then the fight was on again, Danny doing his best not to hurt Tucker... but what else could he do? He didn't have his thermos with him... He could use the ax, or the sword his mother had given him... But he didn't want to... "There has to be a better way!"

The two clashed, Tucker pressing down against Danny, pinning him to the floor, and pressing his throat, suffocating him. "Now leave... forever!" Tucker growled.

"NO...! **_COUGH._**.. TUCKER... STOP!" But he wouldn't he continued to press down, suffocating Danny, crushing his throat. "Don't do it, Tuck! Fight him! _**COUGH**" _Danny's vision began to swim; he was moments from passing out. "Fight him!"

Nothing changed. Tucker just pressed harder.

Stop! Danny couldn't even say it now, just _will. _It. And that might have been enough, but for the fact that Danny was merely mortal. He wasn't all-powerful... But was still more than an ordinary man! He couldn't go down like this; worse men deserved better... and he was DANNY PHANTOM!

**_"STOP IT!"_** He bellowed, leaping from the ground and flipping over, pinning Tucker to the ground... And Danny began instinctively began to try what he had wanted the whole time: Not Tucker's defeat—his healing. He used the same ecto-healing technique he had used to fix Marty and his mother's soldiers.

But to his horror, rather than taking away the corruption Vlad's amulet wrought on him.Tucker started Vanishing into Danny's ghost-aura... and making it GROW...

"TUCKER NO!" Danny yelled. He tried to stop, he couldn't; it was like an addiction, a chain reaction that he couldn't cease. He just kept absorbing Tucker into himself... "I'm sorry..."

And somewhere deep in his soul he heard a whisper. And it sounded like_ Don't be... Thank you, Danny._

And then Tucker was just... gone. But not gone, he was IN Danny. Not his mind, though. Tucker's consciousness had vanished, gone on perhaps finally to rest. But Tucker's body and his POWER had united with Danny.

And Danny's heart ached. Because now, not only was Tucker dead; he was also _gone. _

"It looks like you weren't afraid to destroy your friend after all, Daniel." Vlad's voice echoed through the room, coming from no source other than the speakers in the walls.

"Vlad. You're dead. YOU HEAR ME?" Danny bit his tongue. No... This was no time for hate. He couldn't hate Vlad, lest he become as bad as Vlad could ever be.

"My, my, Daniel. Was that a threat?"

"Come down hear and fight me, coward! Quit hiding behind my father's technology!"

"Ouch, such a stinging remark, child. Let me tell you this. I'll hide as long as I want to. Not because I fear you; far from it. But I fear what you could become if I provoke you. I suppose you'd forgive me if I invited a few friends without your permission?"

Suddenly the large technological constructs in the room began spinning, and the force they generated pushed Danny against the wall. He struggled to movie, but felt like gravity had increased 100 fold. And in the center of the room, more phantoms appeared. Some he recognized. Ember, The Lunch Lady, Walker. Even Klemper showed himself. Other's he didn't recognize were there, but nonetheless, they were under Vlad's control.

No, Tucker was no longer there. But he had left Danny with a gift and knew knowledge. The knowledge he would need to defeat Vlad.

The force pinning Danny against the wall faded, and Danny stood there, channeling his energy and Tucker's. "Thank _you_, Tuck," he whispered...

The final battle was about to begin.


	19. Checkmate?

**Author's Note:**_more and more disinterested in this story as time goes on; I over extended myself here, especially for a first fan fiction, and loaded it with far too many ideas. It seems really silly in retrospect... (And honestly, how many people out there want to read a BttF/Danny Phantom crossover? Two? Hi, Danielle!) That said, I'm still going to finish it, of course, and do the best dang job I know how!_

**Time Phantom: The DeLorean Chronicles  
Chapter 19: Checkmate...?  
**

Danny charged forward. The final battle had begun.

He lashed into Ember, striking her in what would be painful pressure points on a human, but they might not work so well on the dead. They didn't, and Ember lashed out with her guitar and smashed the young superhero into the crowd. Specifically, into the Lunch Lady.

"Lunch is sacred!" she yelled, swinging a butcher's knife at Danny. "You and your friend defiled lunch. Want a cookie?"

Danny blinked. He didn't know which response would set of her ire this time, but then again, it probably wouldn't matter. Here eyes were red with Vlad's mad power, and Danny really had no idea why the amulet didn't work on him, except that he had been controlled once before by Control Freak.

"You can have it!" Danny yelled at the Lunch Lady, blasting the cookie into her mouth and causing an ectoplasmic dome to explode into existence around him. He began shooting beams from his hands and flew up above the crowd of ghosts. Some of them hovered in the air to join them.

He shot them too.

"Perish!" bellowed the Lunch Lady.

"And rock on in hell, Dipstick!" Ember agreed, striking her guitar and causing waves of evil sound to slam into Danny. He didn't even flinch.

"Not this time." Suddenly, Danny's aura flared to life and he blasted down at Ember, his fist glowing, and though she blocked with her guitar, the energy he had taken from Tucker completely destroyed it. His fist burned through the punk rocker ghost, and with remorse for the girl she had been in life, he repeated the technique he had done to Tucker, pulling in Ember's energy and adding it to his aura...

The Lunch Lady thew a meat cleaver and it evaporated on contact. Danny still didn't flinch.

"I don't have time for this!" Danny complained. "Vlad! Show yourself!"

Green fire, the contents of Danny's rage over the corruption of Tucker, blasted out through the room and destroyed the remaining ghosts in the room.

Nothing happened. Danny hovered in the empty room, waiting for something—even a trap would be better than Vlad's ignoring him.

Nothing continued to happen. (1)

It seemed he was going nowhere, until the mechanism that opened the 3D ghost portal began to activate again. And again, Danny found himself pinned against the wall. But this time, he had more power... And more determination. Fighting his way to the center, he began to see more ghosts materialize—Walker, his pirate lackey, Youngblood.

Even Bertrand was there, though Spectra wasn't Perhaps she had been destroyed. Before, he had been powerless to even move... This time, however, Danny fought back, and as Ectoplasm continued to take material form, Danny struggled to the center of the maelstrom... And in the middle of it all, though pain wracked his body, he began the technique again, aiming it at the material of the 3D Ghost Portal itself.

The spherical flashes of energy surrounded his hands and began to spread, like fireflies as they pulled the energy in. Danny gasped, and his eyes shot open. He hadn't even realized he had closed them. Brilliant radiance swirled around him, entering his aura and making it grow in size and brightness. So bright was the light, that it silhouetted Danny in it's glow. He could feel the power coursing through him...

When it was over, Danny was literally glowing. He lowered to the ground where Walker and the Pirate stood, Walker holding some sort of gun, and the pirate with a cutlass. The pirate charged, red energy surrounded him, Danny dodged his slices like they were nothing and then blocked the sword with his fingers. Then he grabbed it and broke it in an action that seemed too fast even for him to comprehend.

"You aren't playing by the RULES, kid," Walker told him, Vlad magnifying his seething annoyance at Danny and turning it to power—and rage. The prison ward's eyes flared red, his skull-like face cracking around them. He fired at Danny, but the bullets had no effect.

"We're using a new set of rules now!"

But before he could attack Walker, a black-clad foot made contact with Danny's facet and knocked him across the room. He turned to see Bertrand in the form of a ninja, wielding a pair of nunchaku and posing threateningly.

"And you've broken the most important one," Bertrand quipped. "Keep your eye on the birdie!" The mad midget assumed the shape of a falcon and dived at Danny tearing at his face. Danny wiped off the ecto-blood and jumped up, standing on the wall and blasting outward as the throngs of minions tried to over power him.

He ran up the wall and flew across the room, and grabbed. Bertrand. The shape shifter tried to ship out, but with minimal effort, he was nothing but ecto-feathers. Danny began to take hits from ghosts on the floor and around him, blasting at him.

Danny grew anxious. And since Vlad obviously wasn't going to let him in, Danny decided he'd settle for breaking and entering.

He would _really_ enjoy the breaking part.

Summoning power from his unfortunate foes, he blasted downward with an sound blast he'd stolen from Ember, destroying the portal and all the ghosts below him. Then he turned his attention in the direction Vlad's room had seemed to be, though with the door and window now closed, he couldn't tell one wall from another in the perfectly symmetrical (and large) room.

"I hope I'm right." And a huge wave of Ectoplasmic Energy exploded from his hands, a bright light like he hadn't seen since he fought Jinx, and tore through stone and metal and wood.

He was right. A very stunned looking Vlad Plasmius stood, glaring at him with a monumental surprise on his face. By his side stood the diminutive ghost Deal, flipping some cards around and awaiting his punishment for tempting Saladin's ghost like he'd done...

Though Danny barely noticed the card dealer. His much aroused ire was focused only on Vlad.

"It's over now, you know," Danny said.

**0000**

Dora continued to hack and slash her way through the army of ghosts. Her cousin Paulina was dead, and the battle was probably lost. She ducked low under the spines of a very prickly looking Gothic ghosts and stabbed him with her Soul Saber.

Suddenly, she realized she'd broken off from the rest of her group and was alone, with some of Vlad's specters closing in quickly. She was surrounded. Lashing out with her sword, she fought back, but they kept coming, and soon she found herself over powered and knocked over.

She puled out her guns and began firing at anything that moved. But her guns were low on energy, and soon they ran out. A ghost tore into her arm and she reeled away and tried to hit it, but it wouldn't be hit. It refused to take a punch...

Another ghost shot her in the leg and she stumbled. There was little she could do, now, but wait for the end.

**0000**

"So, what's behind door number five?" Marty parodied as the door crumbled.

Maddie and Marty burst into a store house, the fifth one they'd tried so far. And finally, they found the grand prize—The 1983 DeLorean, white unpainted steel surface reflecting little light, the trademark DMC on the front grill. Little rust, but quite a bit dusty, Marty thought.

"It looks to be in pretty good shape," Marty stated as he examined the now ancient car.

"Let's get to work fixing it up," said Qwan.

**0000**

Dora tried to rise, but couldn't. A good chunk her her right leg leg was now gone...

She rolled over and saw the mindless drones of Vlad's army. And most of them were leaving. Unfortunately, the three that were staying were a bit more than she could handle in her current state.

"AAAHH!" Dora yelled...

"**_SKVVVT!" _**fate replied.

Dora looked up. And over her, with an anti-ghost lance piercing the attackers, stood Samantha Manson, on her glider, suited up. With Paulina over her shoulder, burnt but breathing.

It was the most wonderful think Dora had ever seen!

"Paulina!" Dora screamed "_Ay! Gracias a Dios_!" And she burst into a stream of Spanish, thanking Sam for rescuing her cousin and her own life.

"No problem. I guess I let my conscience impair my judgment." Sam said. The two women blinked for a minute during an awkward pause. "You know," Sam elaborated. "Saving Paulina and all."

Dora knew what she really meant; coming back when all hope seemed lost—at least in her eyes. "Yeah. Sure."

"Listen," Sam said. "All the ghosts are retreating, or being called back or something. They are heading back towards Wisconsin."

"Danny!" Dora blurted...

"I know." Sam dropped a Fenton Pill and wet it. It turned into a helicopter of all things... "Get in."

**0000**

Danny held up his hands and blasted out, the bolt catching Vlad in the chest and knocking him through the wall. Deal took the opportunity to vanish.

"Well, hello, _son_," Vlad said, getting up from the rubble. They were now in Vlad's throne chamber, it's opulent extravagance evident from themoment Danny entered. Lavish red carpets adorned the center of the jewel-colored floor, from the walls red drapes dangeled, laden in gold. They all bore Vlad's logo, and his monstrous image adorning some.

"You _aren't my father!" _Danny yelled, and blasted Vlad again. "You took my father from me, left me to suffocate in my grief. You engineered it so that Valerie would be your pawn, and her blood's on your hands too. You're a monster in every sense of the word, Vlad."

"Thank you." Plasmius replied.

"That wasn't a complement!" And Danny blasted him again, knocking him against the throne, where something new caught his eye...

"MOM?" He blurted. No, it wasn't his mother, he soon realized—she still had two arms, whoever she was. But she was dressed in the same teal jumpsuit her mother wore. "Oh my—" Danny darted across the room and punched Vlad in the face, then kicked him in the groin. "You pervert! Who is this girl and what have you done to her..."

Vlad responded by punching him across the room. "Now really, Daniel," Vlad said. "Must you resort to physical violence? Blowing up portions of my palace was bad enough, but this?" A wicked grin played out on Vlad's face. And reaching out with his hand, Vlad commanded the jumpsuit on the woman to dissipate... revealing...

"KITTY!" Danny blurted. The jewel around her neck was still there. Which meant...

"I thought I'd keep her around, you know. To make up for the ONE THING I still cant have after these ten years..."

"What about the Packers?" Danny asked with an arch eyebrow.

"Oh, them? They're all dead." Vlad's grin twisted into a frown of concentration, and Kitty vanished into his aura, the amulet glowing with use. And then he grabbed the jewel that had hung around her neck out of the empty air. Energy coursed through it, and a pumpkin materialized over top of it... With the Soul Shredder deposited in it's top.

"You wouldn't? The touch of his blade will make you suffer you worst fears for eternity! You can't wield that!" Danny dived at Vlad, but with a flicked wrist, Vlad blasted Danny away.

"Watch me." Vlad pulled the sword from the pumpkin, holding it high above his head. And then the Fright Knight appeared.

"What is the meaning of this?" it blurted.

Vlad responded by driving his fist through it's armored abdomen. Danny gasped as the figure inside the armor disintegrated, joining Kitty as yet more fuel for Vlad's power. "The meaning of this is the meaning of everything—to serve me!" Vlad through his head back and power exploded over him, burning crimson waves of pure self-interest.

Taking the Soul Shredder, Vlad held it up, and the aura around him washed over it, corrupting it and making it his own. The green blade became a black silhouette in the red sea, and then it subsided, and the Soul Shredder was now the same color as Vlad's new aura.

"I think I'll give it a new name to commemorate this occasion, Daniel." Vlad smirked, and the blade grew at least six inches and contorted into a Gothic shape with multiple points from the sides and a forked tip. "I'll call it the Master's Sword," Vlad said.

"I wouldn't shed a tear if Miyamoto sued," Danny said without humor.

Vlad obviously didn't understand the how much of a pun the new name of his blade was, because he shrugged Danny's comment off and pointed the sword at Danny. "And I wouldn't shed a tear if I knew your father was burning in the pit of hell," Vlad replied, and charged at Danny. "If you won't join me, then you can join him!"

Danny leaped back, sucking his gut in as the blade passed millimeters from his stomach, and then he shot upward, going intangible and flying through the ceiling of Vlad's throne room into a new room, filled with Packer's memorabilia.

"As far as shedding tears goes," Danny said to himself, "fighting here might make Vlad shed a few. I'd find that entertaining."

"Would you, Daniel?" Vlad phased through the floor, not in a fit of rage, but calmly. Seething. "The Packers are dead, Daniel; their merchandise no longer means anything to me."

Danny pulled the Soul Saber from his belt; he must have dropped the ax in one of the previous scuffles. He tried to recall his sword training with Dora, and found enough of it coming back to grip the sword competently. "Then let's finish this," he said. Though he really had been hoping Vlad still cared about Green Bay's football team. If he had, he would be more likely to hold back.

Danny charged with absurd speed forward, smashing his fist into Vlad's chest, and knocking him back through a pile of Packers merchandise, destroying it. He continued forward, swinging his Soul Saber, trying not to get himself caught off guard... He didn't really succeed, as Vlad leaped up and released a shock wave of red energy around him. The wave blasted Danny backwards into a tall trophy, which snapped in two, and Danny kept going until he willed himself to stop with his ghostly flight powers.

Following that assault, Vlad charged, lashing with his newly rechristened Master's Sword. Danny tried to block, and tried to parry. But it was just too much, too fast. Vlad had ten years to learn to outclass him in swords, not counting whatever he might have known before Danny traveled to the future.

"Just give it up, Daniel." Vlad insisted, easily parrying a thrust by Danny and removing the Soul Saber from his grip with a move so fast Danny couldn't copy it if his life depended on it. "This fight was over before it began."

"Maybe the sword fight was!" Danny yelled, summoning his power, absorbed from the souls and pure ectoplasmic energy of the Ghost Zone, and blasted outward with a beam large enough to encompass all of Vlad's body. "But I will never give up! You murdered my father, my friend; you turned my sister into a nut! I won't let it go unpunished!"

"Big words from a teenager," Vlad sighed. "You haven't changed a bit."

Their aura's flared again, and they began to clash, red and green. Good and Evil. Danny and Vlad blasted together and then apart, fired ectoplasm blasts at each other.

Danny ducked under one, which fell into a warehouse and detonated. "No!" Danny blurted, fearing that his mom was in there...

"That was the house with the Time Machine car, wasn't it?"

Ice ran up Danny's gut. If the machine was destroyed, then...

**0000**

Thankfully, Marty and Maddie and Qwan had finally managed to get the DeLorean moving, and took it half a kilometer from the battle well before Vlad blasted the building.

The problem was, Marty explained, that Doc had heavily protected the computers with multiple passwords. The small screen displayed the face of Emmet Brown. "I am recording this message on August 23, 2005," it said. "I sincerely hope that one day, in Time, my friend Marty McFly, or someone with good intentions will find this machine and crack the code of the computer. I have placed safeguards, however that will destroy the DeLorean permanently if security is violated. Press the red button to continue."

A red orb appeared below "Doc" on the screen. Marty pressed it.

"You have precisely thirty seconds to state the exact date on which I sent you back to the future," said Doc.

"November... 12, 1955," Marty said.

"Very good, boy. The voice recognition software recognizes that it's you. I wish I could say it's nice to see you," Doc said. "You have now unlocked the ability of the car to attain the proper speed for Time Travel. The time circuits won't work, however, until you answer this question: What _is _the exact speed at which the time machine activates.. to two significant figures?"

"88 Miles Per Hour," Marty told the computer. It chimed an affirmative.

"This is taking too long," Qwan said. As if to add emphasis to his words, a nearby warehouse exploded—the one where the DeLorean had been found!

"We're makin' progress," Marty reassured him.

**0000**

Vlad chuckled. "Oh well, it didn't really do me any good. I could never get it to run. If I really ever need to Time Travel, I can always track down that Time Traveling ghost. What's his name?"

Danny looked up, fury in his eyes. "I don't care if I have to die to defeat you, Plasmius!" he yelled. "But I swear I'm ridding this world of every trace of you!" Power cosmic surged throughout Danny, and he let out a massive energy blast that consumed Vlad and drove him back.

"Daniel..."

Danny gave Vlad no time to speak; he hit him again, and again, knocking him from side to side, and knocking him senseless. Vlad recoiled from the punches and blasted out red darts of his power, but Danny dodged, blurring in a wavelength of green out of the way and continuing his rabid assault. "No more words," he said icily...

The assault continued, and as Danny's aura grew brighter, Vlad's grew smaller. "It's over Plasmius!" And with one final blow, Danny smashed a huge portion of his energy into Vlad, shattering the Soul Shredder and tearing the white Plasmius suit apart.

Vlad stumbled to his feet, finally recovering from Danny's brutal attack. And then, his face fell off

Or at least the **green** one did...

And underneath, was a face familiar and yet shockingly, disturbing different. The face of Vlad Masters, wrinkled, as if whithered away, his eyes insane and bloodshot, his skin practically chafing off is bones. He was like a walking corpse. And then, Danny's entire body and soul felt as though dipped in liquid nitrogen and the chill consumed him as he realized what this meant...

"No..." Danny gasped. _HE WASN'T EVEN TRANSFORMED!

* * *

_

_(1) _I cannot take credit for the line "Nothing continued to happen." That genius of wordplay was coined, as far as I know, buy Douglas Adams, author of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy novels._  
_


	20. The Hopefire

**Time Phantom: The DeLorean Chronicles  
Chapter 20: The Hopefire  
**

Vlad looked down at the green mask that had fallen off his face. It confused him at first, but then he remembered. His **real** face lay within. His outer face was just a façade, a ruse to intimidate, to gain respect. He didn't want to use his true face all the time, because it drew upon his power greatly. It sucked him dry, which was why his inner face was so decrepit.

He decided now that his outer face was gone and his inner face exposed, he should probably put on the true face.

"Daniel," he said, "I see that you've discovered my secret." Vlad looked down solemnly. "You're the first person I've had to transform to fight in nearly ten years, Daniel." Vlad looked up and smiled evily. "Congratulations."

"You…," Daniel was seemingly in shock.

"Yes. I. It is always I. Not you, not your father, not this planet! I am the one who gets what he wants. What I _**deserve**_! Goodbye, Daniel."

Ominous music began to boom in the background as red energy tendrils lashed out from Vlad's body, destroying the fake Plasmius costume and knocking Danny back. The red columns of ghost light arced upward, spilling into the sky and tenting it blood red. Vlad hovered off the ground consumed by his power, which now spilled forth from the roof of his tower and down the sides as if it had weight.

Black rings of energy slid into existence at Vlad's center and traced up his body, covering his pale skin and worn tux with the form formerly known as Vlad Plasmius. But now, it was different. The suit spilled over with the crimson power of his aura, and if it were possible, his hair stood even higher and appeared even more as a demon's horns, hovering ominously above his head.

His green skin radiated a glow, as did his eyes. Vlad Plasmius? No.  
_  
Plasmadeus!_

**oooo**

Danny struggled to his feet, the subzero chill receding to a gut and giving way to a grim determination. Vlad may have become all-powerful, but so had been Pariah Dark. So had been Dan Phantom. He had beaten them. He would beat Vlad!

"Behold," Vlad bellowed. "The new ruler of this planet! PLASMADEUS."

"You totally stole that from Sizzle," Danny shot, diving towards the newly revealed arch nemesis. "And you know where thieves go!" Danny charged his energies, the ones he had absorbed, and briefly considered the irony of that statement.

"Hell?" Vlad asked, catching Danny in a massive ectoplasm talon and crushing him with it. "Honestly, boy, if hell exists, how can I go there? I am going to live FOREVER!" Energy shot through Danny's body and he screamed out in agony. Vlad's torture wracked is body, then suddenly eased off.

Danny looked up through charred strands of his hair hanging down over his eyes. "I was going to say, '"WASHINTGON D.C.!'" And as he bellowed his punch line, he unleashed the Ghostly Wail on Vlad, blasting him backward and forcing him to let go of his aching body. He drew more energy and a fired a double-handed ecto-beam at Vlad. It didn't even faze him, and Plasmadeus charged forward, thrashing Danny with his fists and then using a hammer fist smash to pound him towards the ground. But before Danny could recover, Plasmadeus blasted down with his aura trailing like a great comet plummeting towards earth, and smashed a fist into Danny's back, then unloaded a combination of brutal blows.

"Stop it!" Danny blasted away and fired back at Vlad, again to no avail.

"Foolish boy!" Vlad deflected the beams with zero effort and created his own massive blast, which he then hurled at Danny, knocking him down, into Vlad's tower. It exploded in a brilliant flash of red. "Stop it? Stop it? It has only just begun!"

Somehow, Danny heard him despite being buried under fifty tons of rubble.

**oooo**

The sound waves assailed the equilibriums of Marty, Maddie, and Qwan, and they had to cover their ears to avoid being deafened.

"No!" Maddie screamed, "Vlad is killing him."

"Danny isn't going to let Vlad win," Marty said, still struggling through the maze of securities Doc had placed on the DeLorean.

"This is the final question. You've probably more than proven yourself by now, but I knew that I couldn't be too careful." The Doc paused momentarily, then continued. "What is my middle name?"

Marty goggled. He knew it started with an 'L' but… he didn't know what it was! "You don't know?" Qwan blurted..

"He never told me!" Marty protested. "I'm not a telepath."

"You never bothered to ask him what the 'L' stood for?" Maddie quizzed.

"You couldn't figure out your own son was a half ghost superhero?" Marty shot back.

"You have only ten seconds left!" Qwan warned.

"Um…"

Five seconds.

"I ur… Leonard?" Marty asked.

Zero seconds.

"Identity confirmed," Doc said. The faces adopted puzzled looks. "I knew you wouldn't know it," he said, "so if anyone had given the correct answer, the DeLorean would have exploded. Mr. Fusion is now online. Happy Time traveling, my boy. I sure hope you can fix the future."

Marty sweatdropped.

"It's Lathrop, by the way," he said, fizzling out of existence.

**oooo**

The same sound waves of Vlad's yell shortly thereafter reached the ears of the ghost fighters even now closing in on the fleeing ghost army; they had just crossed the Wisconsin border.

"Oh, man," Sam said, "did you hear that?"

Paulina answered, "I did. It sounds like Danny isn't doing to well, then, no?"

"He will win. He has to."

Dora, now on her glider, flew on in silence. Her quarrel with Vlad was more personal; she'd lost her pet sentient monkey Boots to his wrath, and she wanted revenge.

The rest of the group, including Flare, flew on below them.

"What's that up there?" Dora suddenly asked, pointing a head of them to four red something or others flying to intercept the ghost army.

Gyzz removed a telescope from his backpack and zoomed in on the figures. "..the kludge?" He blurted. "It looks like a bunch of Crimson Chins from those old comic books."

"You're kidding?" Sam deadpanned.

"See for yourself." He handed the scope to Sam, who confirmed what Gyzz had said. "He's right. And that short guy, Kaze, is with them."

Silence overcame them as they waited to see what was going on, when suddenly the Chins—soon joined by four more for a total of eight, laid into the ghost army—as did Kaze.

"Attack, then? Paulina asked.

"I think this as good a chance as any to keep them off Danny. I just hope he doesn't need help."

**oooo**

"Somebody please help me!" Danny screamed, ectoplasmic tears leaking from his eyes and Plasmadeus continued to thrash him around.

"There is nobody, Daniel. You can only help yourself. Pledge your allegiance…and your mother… to me!"

Danny's anger flared and he snapped out a fist into Vlad's face knocking im back. "I will NEVER let you have my mother, or me!" And an ectoplasmic energy beam the size of a fully loaded minivan flashed out into Plasmadeus, knocking him towards the ground. "Remember that."

Vlad glowed, and suddenly was back up next to Danny. "Ecto-portation," he said. "Very useful."

He waved his fingers in a slashing motion, and tiny strand of energy flicked out and cut deep into Danny's shoulder.

"AAUGHH!"

Again, and Danny received a gash in his stomach.

"Uggh! Vlad, I…!"

"Not Vlad. **_Plasmadeus_**."

Plasmadeus cut again, and again, lashing Danny as if with a cat of nine tails, leaving him covered in deep cuts oozing green ectoplasm blood. Danny screamed out in pain. He couldn't give up, but he was about to give in. He had little stamina left and…

No! He had to stop Vlad! But exhaustion wracked his body, and despite his fear being gone, Vlad was just too powerful. He would have given anything for one of his dad's goofy gadgets right now. The gauntlets or the Specter Deflector.

But his dad was ten years dead.

It would have been great if Jazz popped in with the Ghost Peeler and bail his butt out like she had so many times in the past. But Jazz wasn't coming. She wasn't going anywhere. Her mind was completely broken. And then he thought of Tucker. Tucker would just through him a Fenton Thermos and Danny would Vlad into it. Problem solved.

But Tucker couldn't do that either. Tucker was now a part of Danny, in spirit if not in mind. Danny's lifelines were gone. Then it occurred to him that they were gone BECAUSE of Vlad. Because he just couldn't be content with what he had and always wanted MORE. More money, more power. The Packers. His mother. The Packers….

His _mother._

"STOP IT!" Danny bellowed as Vlad cut at him again, a short burst of Ghostly Wail bending the dark sword back into Vlad's face. It cut a gash and some blood leaked out. Black, semi-lucent stuff. It was like human blood mixed with ghost blood, evidence of Vlad's continued corruption by his ghost form.

"You… injured me." Vlad's statement was said without emotion.

Well. Not entirely. Danny thought somewhere deep inside, he had said it with mild surprise. Without warning, ghost energy lashed out. Danny saw it, heading for his eyes. But it moved so fast, he didn't have time to blink… and that probably wouldn't have helped anyway. The beam cut into his eyes; Plasmadeus jerked it away, and it disappeared.

Pain surged through Danny's face, and he screamed out as he grabbed the oozing sockets where his eyes had been.

"Now, I have injured you, Daniel," Vlad said. "We're even."

**oooo **

A ghost soldier lunged forward and rammed his bayonet into a Crimson Chin; the spandex clad hero buckled back and vanished in a poof.

"Hey!" Timmy blurted, "what gives?"

"Sorry, Sport, answered the newly healed Wanda. "We can't have the Crimson Chins dying without messing up comic continuity."

Cosmo spoke, "Any more than it is already, of course."

Timmy ignored him, and blasted a wave of ghosts. "So you're saying that if a Crimson Chin gets hurt, you poof him back to the comic world?"

"We have to, Timmy." Wanda insisted.

"That's just great," Timmy dodged under a shotgun blast and used a wind blade to rend the ghost to pieces…. "Fine, then. Let's get turbulent!"

Charging his Kaze-Fu powers, Timmy unleashed a vortex on the battlefield, tearing thorough the ghosts and clearing a way for the oncoming traffic. Freedom fighters from Amity apparently were following the ghost army, because soon after he and the Chins had engaged the army, Timmy had seen fireballs and soul sabers flash about, indicating the battle had just gotten a lot easier.

Timmy took the opportunity to have some fun. "Ha!" he dodged under a slash from a rapier. "To slow. Missed me." He blasted the ghost and found a new sparring partner.

"Man, this is just like a videogame!"

**oooo**

"Watch it Gyzz," warned Sam, "this is **_not_** a videogame!"

"I know." Gyzz looked at the display his backpack projected in front of him. "The ghost army is still retreating towards the Palace. Is it possible that Vlad is… scared?"

"Somehow, I doubt it," Sam replied sadly.

**oooo**

"Ugh!"**_ THWACK_**! "UGH!" Danny flew back and slammed into a wall, his power fading, his hair turning black again…

"NO!" drawing deeper from those he had absorbed, Danny forced more power to the forefront. Vlad wouldn't not be content to toy with him if he wasn't a ghost. And Danny had to buy time!

"No what?" Vlad laughed. "Honestly, Daniel, you aren't making much sense."

"Shut up," Danny bit out. "You… you are going to pay for all this, Plasma… Vlad. My dad. Valerie, Tucker. My sister."

"How can you fight me, Daniel? You can't even see me! I could kill you at any moment, and yet you persist."

Danny tilted his head in the direction that Vlad's voice was coming from, and through the darkness, he could FEEL Vlad, he could sense the evil power, and the sheer madness radiating from him.

Danny blasted in that direction, but felt Vlad move out of the way at the last second, his beam flying harmlessly into the distance. But he had what he needed; if he could feel Vlad, he could still fight him.

"It ends tonight, 'Plasmadeus'," Danny insisted, spitting up some ecto-blood. He charged at the monster, pounding at him with everything he had and more, contacting with blow after blow, until Vlad had no choice but to fight back.

Three hits was all it took to end Danny's rampage, and Danny began to fall, no longer directly above the tower, the blind teen feel straight towards the outer wall of Vlad's palace, unable to know how fast he was going, unable to see the ground. He was barely even conscious….

THUD.

He landed sooner than he had thought, and a new wave of pain wracked his body, his shoulder coming out of place.

And oddly, he thought he heard Sam's voice…

**oooo**

"Danny, I got you!" Sam said. She wished he hadn't hit the glider so hard, but it was the best she could do. Still, Danny was in pain, with a bunch of wounds. It would take more medical skills than Sam knew to fix him up…

Landing the glider, Sam took Danny's body in his arms, and ran towards the calm center of the maelstrom of violence around them…

"Mrs. Fenton!" she yelled, dodging an anti-ghost artillery shell from one of the Endsville units. "Maddie! I've found Danny!"

"Sam? Is that you?" Maddie dashed over to see Sam and her son.

"Is he alright?" Marty McFly asked?

A soul saber blade crackled to life and cut down a small flying bat ghost before it could take out Marty's face, and Qwan warned Marty something about being more observant.

"I don't, know," Maddie said. "Just get him in that car! You guys have to go back and undo all this!"

More ghosts succumbed to the explosions, more humans fell and became ghosts themselves, and Vlad observed it all from above.

"ENOUGH!" he bellowed, raising the Amulet of Roasha high above his head. All the ghosts under his control immediately looked up, their eyes glowing bright red as they gazed upon their master. "This war has gone on long enough, and it ends tonight. I must thank you, Daniel, for gathering all my adversaries here. I can eliminate them. All of them."

"No!" Danny bit out, opening his eyes and forgetting they were sliced in half. Pain bit at him, but he did not flinch.

"No! Danny!" he heard his mom gasp in horror at the sight of his wound.

"Oh, my gosh! Your eyes!" Sam got closer as if she could help by proximity. "Are you OK?"

"No. I won't be OK until this future has no Vlad Plasmius."

"Then let's go undo it!" Marty said. "The Time Machine is ready!"

Danny chuckled. "Vlad will never let us escape. And I won't be satisfied until I make him pay for everything he's done here."

"Danny, revenge isn't the answer. It will lead you down the same path Vlad has taken."

"This isn't revenge, mom! It's justice! It's… retribution!"

"Snap out of it Danny!" Sam admonished. "If you give into these feelings, then you're no better than him!"

"DON'T YOU EVER SAY THAT!" Danny bellowed, his power flaring towards Sam, who jumped away in shock. An icy chill ran up Danny's spine again. Had he just…?

The look in Sam's eyes would have said it all, he knew. He was glad he could not see it... "Sam…" Danny fell on his knees. "I'm sorry."

Plasmadeus, apparently getting bored, interrupted. "This whole thing is really touching," he said, "but I have a war to win." Vlad's power flared around the amulet, and the ghost armies began breaking up, disappearing and joining Plasmadeus, making him stronger, if that were possible.

"No!" Flare swore in Japanese at Vlad, but it was all to no avail.

"Forget it, Flare," Danny said. "It's hopeless."

**oooo**

Maddie bent down, and placed her remaining arm around her child.

"Maddie?" Vlad bellowed. "Is that you?" his voice seemed almost… concerned.

"Ah, well, as a ghost, you'll like me a lot more than you do now." Vlad grinned, bearing dark teeth, but Maddie ignored it.

"Danny," said Flare, "Get up. It is only as hopeless as you make it."

"No, it's pretty hopeless," Sam insisted.

Maddie embraced her son, and leaned over to whisper in his ear. "Son. Do you remember what I used to tell you about hope? About how even a faint spark could turn into an ember, and that ember into a flare…"

Danny tilted his head his mother's direction. "And that flare into a burning fire that could consume all evil." He smiled.

"Hope," she whispered. "All our hope is in you know, Danny. I know you can do this. Don't do it for your father, or Tucker or Valerie; do it for those of us you still have! For me, and Jazz… and Sam."

The words of Maddie Fenton echoed in his mind. Fighting for revenge: it's what he'd been doing the whole time. But that… that was wrong. It would only lead him down the same path as Vlad. And that was a place he **NEVER** wanted to tread. Danny stood up, and looked in the direction of Vlad. "Plasmadeus!" he bellowed. "I don't care how powerful you are! I won't let you hurt anyone else!"

Danny's aura flared, and he tapped _into hope_. The hope of those around him, the hope of his mother, of Flare, of Marty and Kaze, of all the soldiers. Of Paulina and Dora.

His aura grew.

Vlad cackled. "You're resolve is admirable, but you're power is gone, you can barely stay transformed. Give up!"

"No."

"Then you'll die with everyone else."

"Not so fast!" Kaze screamed, and hurling a boomerang, he knocked the Amulet of Roasha from Vlad's hand. It plummeted to the ground, where Danny caught it, feeling where it was by the power circulating through it.

Vlad laughed again. "I've been absorbing the ectoplasm of every ghost I've found worthless to me for ten years, boy. You think that getting your hands on the amulet will change anything?"

"I have something better than ectoplasm, Vlad! I have the love of my family! The faith they place in me! And the HOPE that I can destroy you once and for all!" Danny raised the amulet up, and his powers coursed into it, shattering the red glow around it. "You can't see past your own arrogance, Vlad. You could never have a family. You could never know what it means to have people there, who always pick you up when you can't do so for yourself!"

"Touching, isn't it?" Vlad said to himself. Or perhaps to one of his many fractured personalities.

Danny reached out and touched. He touched the minds and hearts of all the ghosts he could find, on earth and in the Ghost Zone, and drawing them to Wisconsin. Thousands upon thousands.

Vlad lowered his hand, and then raised the other to his chin. "What's this? You've brought me more fodder?" Throwing his head back, Vlad began to absorb the newcomers, tearing their bodies apart and growing stronger.

"How the?"

"He must have had the amulet for so long his body acts like a living battery of ghost power now." Sam tried. It was as good an explanation as any.

"You take what doesn't belong to you, Vlad. I take only what is freely given!" Danny reached out through the amulet and connected with the legion of spirits around him. "If you want this nightmare to end, if you want Vlad's reign to end and the war to finally stop, then give me your hope! Please!"

They agreed. It was do or die, and anyone who wanted not to die (again) decided to **do.** Even if Danny lost, it was better than not taking the chance, they agreed.. White-green power echoed out and the flow of energy to Vlad stopped.

"What?" he blurted.

It all flowed in to Danny, charging him, empowering him. Hope. A small spark. An Ember. A Flare. And now a fire. A consuming flame that licked around Danny, lighting up the Wisconsin countryside for miles. Danny was but a tiny silhouette in the luminescence,…

Then something amazing happened. Danny changed; he ascended to a higher level. And he transformed again, his gloves and boots and belt radiating their color inward and making Danny's suit a brilliant white, blinding the eyes of many as he hovered above the night sky. The logo Sam had made for him reappeared on his chest in brilliant glowing green.

He opened his eyes.

They were back, no longer cut, and were a solid green ectoplasmic pit with no pupil or iris, but they were deep with righteous fury and compassion. In everyway, they were exactly like what Vlad's eyes were not.

Sam looked up, and a tear ran down her face. It was so beautiful!

Maddie smiled, and she and Sam reached a consensus: "Get him, Danny!"

The Fire around Danny flickered into a stream, like the tail of a comet, as it chased Danny across the sky and over to Vlad's imposing figure.

"How? You insolent little!"

Danny looked down into Vlad's eyes, and without even moving, his aura caught up, and exploded into a massive ball of energy around Vlad. He held out his hands and charged, blasting ectoplasmic energy beams into his dark adversary. "I'm not the insolent one here, Vlad. You're the one who thinks you own the darn world."

A horrible scowl twisted over Vlad's face. "My name is **_PLASMADEUS_**!" Power erupted form him, knocking Danny backwards and upwards, twirling through the air. Plasmadeus, satisfied that all of Vlad had been purged from his being, flew up, and raised his hands. "I rule this planet, and you will not stop me no matter how much 'hope' you think you have!" Plasmadeus held his right hand high above his head.

"**_PIERCING OBLIVION!"_ **He bellowed. The attack that formed above him was just that: a literal oblivion. A dark void of utter nothing, held in check by a faint crimson aura. And looking into it pierced your brain and without fail made the most self assure person feel how weak they truly were in the grand scheme of the Universe.

It had _no such effect_ on Danny.

Enraged, Plasmadeus, flung the dark ball, the size of a skyscraper, at Danny. "You may not fear it now, but when it touches you, you'll wish you had!"

Danny raised a hand, the Fire priming around him, becoming a green glow… and he caught the attack. "No Vlad. I am SICK of fear, and I'm SICK of YOU!" Danny hurled the attack back at his foe, the crimson shell cracking, and falling away to reveal a green shield around the dark ball of nothing.

"It can't be!" Plasmadeus bellowed. "This is--!"

"Impossible? It's happening, isn't it?"

That wasn't Danny's voice….

"J…. Jack!"

Vlad and Danny turned to the side, where Jack Fenton stood. A ghost, but looking no different than he had ten years ago. "That little girl in the goth shirt who takes care of dead people told me all about you, Vlad Masters."

"Jack!" Plasmadeus wretched, hating himself. Even after all his toils, all his troubles, Jack Fenton lived on even in death. "JACK!" A dark claw reached out, ready to rend Jack's ghost in two.

But a white Flame destroyed it, and Danny hovered in between them. Danny looked back, his burning eyes full of happiness, at his father. He said nothing, though. Jack had the most important words of all.

"Danny," he said. "I want you to know that above all else, I'm proud of you. Now go fix this mess. It's hard to find fudge when you're not among the living."

Turning, Danny blasted over to Plasmadeus and riddled him with blows, beating the ever loving snot out of him, and finishing off with a painful sounding spin kick. "Eh…!" Vlad couldn't even beg for mercy, as Danny's kick had shattered his jaw.

But mercy Danny granted anyway, in a form. Channeling his energies into a familiar pattern, Danny formed a perfect replica of the Ghost Catcher, suspending the net inside a ring of his Hopefire, and flung it at Plasmadeus… and the ghost was ripped out of him, the frail human Vlad Masters falling towards the ground, crashing with a sickening thud into the flying DeLorean.

"I got the walking corpse!" Shouted Marty. "Finish off that ghost thing!"

Danny complied, and just as the pure essence of Plasmadeus' power surrounded him, the Fire exploded around him again, blasting it away, and curling it into a ball, a tiny prison for an immense power.

"Danny!" Gyzz shouted. "Here!" Danny looked down to see Gyzz use his backpack's mechanical arm to fling a shiny white object towards him—The Fenton Peeler! It had saved his life so many times before, and now it was time he used it to save everyone else's. Danny pressed the button, and the armor within surrounded him; he transformed and it began to glow, and the burning green D logo appeared on it's chest.

"YOU WILL PERISH!" The essence of Plasmadeus yelled, charging at Danny one last time.

Danny smirked. "**_You_** _**first!**_" He pulled the trigger, and an eye-burning teal-white beam exploded from the tip of the gun, tearing into essence and knocking it back… It dissipated in a burst of Hopefire.

Plasmadeus was **no more**.

**oooo**

Danny lowered to the ground, and his family rushed to gather around, congratulating him. And so did the entire army.

After he'd assured them it would all be OK now, he detransformed and turned to Marty, his eyes repaired by the power. "I still have some energy left. I can feel it!" Danny realized he was innaproriately giddy given the mood, but…

"If we go back in time now to before Valerie died… we can change this whole mess!"

"Then let's get going!" Marty reasoned. The two walked over to Vlad Masters. He was dead. Apparently his body had been so ravaged, subsiting only on Ghost Power for so long, that he couldn't survive with out it. Danny did not watch as Dora and Paulina carried his body away. He would always remember what Vlad could have been without his ghost half, what he had seen the **first** time he'd been to the future. He couldn't help but feel sorry for the man.

"Let's go home," Marty said.

"Wait!" Sam came up, and knelt by Danny. "Danny. I… In the past. You know I care for you, right."

Danny nodded."We're best friends."

"Danny…" Sam held him tightly. "You know it's more than that. I don't want this to be our future."

"Are you saying…?" Danny gasped.

"I don't know. I don't know how I would react, or even if you cared back then. But…"

Danny pushed her away. "I understand, I think. Sam, I promise that this future will never happen long as it's in my power to change it. I won't let you go through this again."

They embraced again...

Then the two parted, Kaze, Marty and Danny Phantom entering the DeLorean. "Destination: 2005!" The car accelerated to 88 Miles Per Hour, and in a flash of light and a trail of fire, it disappeared to fix the past.

"See you there," I guess, said Flare.

A tear fell from Jack's eye. "Lot's of fudge," he whispered.


	21. Righting the Right Wrongs

**Author's Note: **_Finally, the story comes to a close. This has been a fun experience and Danny's had to go through a lot, but the battle isn't quite over yet. So without more of that French word I still can't spell, here is Righting the Right Wrongs._

**Friday, January 28, 2005 4:00PM**

The air in a remote town north east of Amity Park crackled with a triple sonic-boom, and suddenly a DeLorean appeared where there had been none before. Timmy, still in his Kaze gear, rode between Danny and Marty. He was the first to go, disappearing in a puff of smoke after clicking what appeared to be a standard ballpoint pen. Where it took him, Danny and Marty could only guess. Ignoring the dilemma, Marty turned the car southwest and headed to the town called Amity.

**Amity Park**

Vlad watched the whole plan go as he had expected, up until a certain point. The attack Danny had used was supposed to burn Gray's soul from her body. Instead, it had the odd effect of causing her to implode. Danny had reacted appropriately though, and Vlad had still been able to steal the technology he'd need. Now all he needed was to find a suitable body for his planned ten-year charade. Perhaps former Arkansas governor Clinton would do. He had been steamed ever since Lex Luthor had defeated him in the 1992 presidential election. Or perhaps he could go for some psychopath down in Arkham, like The Joker. Valerie was only a pawn. Still, her odd method of death was perplexing. He would have to watch young Daniel for that attack in the future. A wicked thought occurred to him as he began to fly away from the battle.

"By the way, Daniel," he said, smirking, "I did break down and get a cat. His name is Jack, if you're curious." Of course, that was a lie. He would never name a pet after the man who had ruined his life and stolen the woman who should have been his wife. Then again, If Jack hadn't forgotten to carry that 2...

**Abandoned Building near the Docks at Lake Amity 6:32PM**

Jack Fenton watched as the ghost boy strode back and forth, once again trying to explain why he was holding Jack hostage.

"For the last time, Dad...Dad... Dadio... I am not holding you hostage! I am keeping you here for your own protection!"

"Then why am I tied up?" Jack asked incredulously.

"Because you're far too hyperactive. I don't trust you not to get yourself killed."

"So what about her?" Jack motioned towards the young African American woman tied up across the room. She apparently was a ghost hunter herself, judging by the gear the Phantom Child had stolen from her and left not twenty-five feet away against the wall.

"She would get in the way. She'd die too," Danny sighed. He was getting dangerously close to just detransforming and telling his father who he was. "Calvin," Danny addressed the older man at the back of the room, who had been watching the whole scene with a degree of humor, "put a gag on D... him.. and let's go."

Marty complied with Danny's request.

* * *

After the Phantom and his assistant had been gone a few minutes, Jack inhaled deeply through his nose and blew out his mouth so hard the tape he'd been gagged with flew off. "So, Miss...?" 

"Call me Val," said the young woman, who had freed her hands and torn off the gag shortly before Jack had.

"Any advice on how to get out of here?" Jack asked, struggling with the ropes.

"You're son can tie a not," she said.

"What does my son have to do anything?" Jack asked.

Valerie shook her head. So he didn't know, just as she'd thought. It had been pretty easy for her. Danny had come to her apartment after the homework project with the flour sack, and she'd scene his head right next to her photos of Danny Phantom. Of course, it wasn't until Tucker had accidentally blurted it out a few weeks before during the attack of the ghost armies controlled by Jinx that she knew without a doubt. She had began to wonder if it was perhaps a deceased ancestor of the Fentons, but Tucker had babbled something about him gaining powers and being "half-ghost"--whatever that meant.

"The ghost boy **_IS _**your son, moron."

Much to Valerie's incredulity, Jack burst into a fit of laughter. "That's ridiculous. My son isn't _dead!"_

"Hello! He almost called you _DAD _earlier!"

Jack looked at Valerie with condescension. "I'm sorry, that must have been confusing," he said, "You see, _dadio_ was fifties slang for _dawg _or _homie... _Or whatever you kids call each other these days. My new theory is that the ghost boy died in the fifties!"

Valerie rolled her eyes at the racial stereotype. After ghosts, Valerie decided she'd kill all 'gangsta rappers' next.

"... and my son would _never_ use that sort of anachronistic term to talk with his old man." Jack smiled a big oblivious smile.

And Valerie, totally beyond any emotional civility, actually managed to facevault despite her not being an anime character. It was quite painful though. _How dense is this guy? _Valerie wondered.

"So. Any advice on how to get out of here?" Jack asked her. What took the cake was that Valerie wasn't even sure he realized he had already asked that question…

* * *

**High Above the Great Plains**

Vlad Masters had decided to take the scenic route back to Wisconsin, moving slowly. The equipment he'd stolen from Jack was quite sensitive, and booking it home would likely cause some of it to break and become useless. He briefly thought he'd heard the sound of some other hovercraft, perhaps smaller than his own. But his own made such loud and strange noises on occasion, he paid it little mind. Within a few minutes, Vlad thought his ghost sense detected the faint smell of intangibility being used nearby, but it could have just been his pilot fixing something in the cockpit. After all, if Daniel had come near, he would sense it. And if he had skipped town like it had appeared, then Vlad had nothing to worry about... right?

WRONG!

The youngest Fenton sidled across the top of the hovercraft's dorsal stabilizing fin, and then he crawled across the top to the cockpit. Marty had used the suddenly 30-year-old DeLorean to pursue Vlad, and Danny had leapt from the top of the car onto Vlad's hovering ship. He looked in and saw an ugly green ghost in a postmaster's uniform in the pilot's seat.

A flash of untransformed intangibility got Danny into the cockpit of Vlad's over sized flying transport. He remained invisible as he landed, and then played Solid Snake, placing the business end of his mother's Anti-Ghost Laser right up to the ear of the specter in the pilot's seat (why the ghost needed to sit down was beyond him) and activated it, frying the poltergeist's equivalent of a brain. It dissipated and returned to the ghost zone. Or perhaps it was obliterated. Danny had no idea what this thing did, and in retrospect, the thermos might have been a better choice morally. But after 30 straight hours running on adrenaline, caffeine, and ectoplasmic energy, Danny wasn't in the mood to debate the morality of killing what was already dead.

He turned, priming himself to go ghost, and opened the door to the passenger section, where Vlad sat. The surprise in Vlad's eyes was the most priceless thing Danny had witnessed since... well... ever. He savored every moment of Vlad's horror. After seeing the hell Vlad would make of the future, Danny would pull no punches here.

"Daniel..." Vlad finally gasped out. His confidence returned. "This is unexpected, but you'll excuse me if I'm not shaking in my boots." Vlad transformed, with two rings of solidified darkness sliding over him and making him Vlad Plasmius.

Danny looked up at the monster who'd thought he'd gotten away with murder. "Good evening Vlad. I think you'll find you've underestimated me. I'm **going ghost**!"

Danny's white rings slid up and down, giving him his trademark costume. He lunged at Vlad, knocking him out of the perpetually open door of the helicopter-like hover craft and the two began to exchange blows in the air, Vlad using mostly right hooks and Danny mostly defending. Danny ducked under a powerful-but-slow blow from Vlad and planted his foot firmly in Vlad's stomach and kicked off, performing a back flip in the air and coming to a stop.

* * *

"I'm surprised, Daniel. You couldn't lay a hand on me five hours ago and now we seem even." Vlad summoned a magenta ghost aura. "But of course, seemingly even doesn't mean truly even." Indeed, it would take far more than Danny could muster without summoning the power of the Primmortal. And since Danny seemed to be completely oblivious to the power's existence, despite using it to fight the fire demon that should have been his slave and greatest soldier. Of course that was before she'd transformed into something truly horrific that Vlad could have by no means beaten, but Daniel did. It was infuriating to Vlad then, but that fury had passed when Vlad came to the realization that Danny didn't even know what he was. 

The faint green ghost aura that surrounded Danny grew much larger. "You're right Vlad. We're on totally different levels." Danny charged at Vlad, slamming his fist into Vlad's face and then retreating backwards, launching a series of recto-beams at him in an order his mother told him was indefensible.

And sure enough, Vlad blocked the first two, and the fourth, but was hit by the third, fifth, and sixth. Vlad reeled from the three hits and returned fire, hitting Danny right in the chest and knocking him back. But Danny just smirked.

"Is that all you've got?"

Vlad called Danny's 'bluff', and summoned a giant ectoplasmic energy ball and hurled it at Danny. It must have been the size of the hover craft itself.

"You think you've called my bluff?" Danny grinned, not even concealing his disgust at the man he was looking at. And borrowing a line from Vlad, he returned the sting. **"YOU! CALLED! WRONG!"**

The gigantic magenta ball of ghost power was flying directly at Danny, but he didn't worry about it. He just stood there until it was about ten feet away, and then raised his left hand. The green aura that surrounded him cushioned the impact, and Danny caught the slow-moving attack with his hands and his green glow surrounded it, causing the ball to appear jet black.

"This won't end well," Vlad said to himself.

"You think you know who I am, Vlad? You think you can manipulate me? Wrong. My father is alive. Valerie's blood is not on my hands. All of it falls on you, Plasmius!" Danny hurled the ball back at its creator.

"This really won't end well." Plasmius called Vlad pulled up both his hands to stop the returned attack, but the boost Danny had given it made it impossible.

"Game. Set. Match." Danny said as his aura flared into the shape of some mythical bird and he charged Vlad and the ball of energy, slamming his fist into it and sending Vlad and the ball, along with himself, towards the ground. Vlad did just what was expected of him, as well: Plasmius went intangible and phased through the ball.

Which is, of course, exactly what Danny wanted him to do. Danny used the aura surrounding the ball as an extension of his power, and caused the attack to turn intangible itself. This made it fall into the same plane as Vlad and the result was the evil ghost being caught in the middle, writhing in burning agony that Danny would have savored if he was a sadist. But Danny just wanted him out of his hair, not tortured. So he threw the ball at the ground, and trying to suppress his hopes that Vlad would die from it.

Suddenly his anger scared him. Murderous rage wasn't like Danny. What had happened to trying to save Sizzle repeatedly? Did the mere act of destroying her unleash something evil in him? Before seeing his father killed, Danny had never even considered actually killing Vlad. Well, Not even then. He'd wanted to put Vlad down, to be sure, but again, death was too good. It was only when he'd seen...What Vlad did to Sam, to Tucker, and to Jazz... Not personally, but the change his terrible future had wrought on them. Sure, Sam had always been cynical, but she always held out confidence in Danny. Vlad had destroyed that. He had destroyed what made her her, beyond the cynicism. He had taken her Faith. Her Hope. And dare Danny think it? Her LOVE for him? Danny often wondered if his relationship with Sam would evolve into something more, but mostly because everyone else said it would. Not because he was attracted to her in that way, right? But Future Sam had just thought of him as a delusional, naive child.

And Jazz. She was completely out of her mind. Danny could never let that happen to his sister. Things had to change.

A sudden pain in his abdomen drove him out of his quandary. Vlad phased visible and hit him again, this time in the face. Danny reeled and re summoned his aura. Guilt could wait; he had a monster to dethrone. Danny blocked Vlad's third fury-driven blow and punched him in the chest with a Ecto-Fist, and then followed up with the indefensible sequence again. But this time Vlad had wised up, so he shot straight up in an act of retreat, and all but one of the shots missed him.

Danny didn't like how long this was taking, either. "Hey, Vlad." he said. "You think we could end this fight soon. I don't have all day."

This angered Vlad, and he charged Danny for a little payback against Danny for what he had given him in his cabin.

_At 112 miles an hour, I bet this hurts! _And Vlad was capable of traveling much faster than 112 miles an hour.

The ecto-ball Danny had returned had burned away one of Vlad's sleeves, and the scar Sizzle's Soulsearer flame had given him glowed in the light of the setting sun. And Danny wouldn't let himself become either kind of monster, as long as he could fight it.

Danny transformed. He didn't want to show this form to Vlad, of course. It wasn't efficient: sure, he could access the power he'd gained more readily, but it burned it faster too. Once the boost he'd carried back from the future wore off, using this form would likely result in almost instant exhaustion. Nevertheless, his suit went white and eyes shone as totally green orbs. He threw an enormously wide ecto beam that caught the surprised-but-still-charging Vlad completely off guard.

While Vlad was reeling, Danny charged forward, driving a fist into Vlad's gut, and proceeding to beat the living crap out of him, throwing him around. At one point, Vlad split into four, and Danny did the same.

Just as Danny knocked the four Vlad's back together and reformed himself. Vlad detransformed and began to fall, beaten and exhausted. From this elevation, the fall would surely kill a normal human, so Danny did something that he hated to do, but had to do. There was no way he could catch up to Vlad's descent in time. So he gave Vlad some of his energy. Making a small ball of ectoplasmic light in his hand, Danny threw it at him, and then reverted to his standard ghost level and headed earthward. Arriving seconds before Vlad Plasmius' barely conscious form hit the ground. (He could have beat Vlad to the ground, but Vlad was quite a large lateral distance from Danny as well.)

* * *

_How is this possible? _Vlad watched his enemy, the boy, walk over to his aching body. Fury surged in him. He was **VLAD PLASMIUS!**

Things like this weren't capable of happening to him.

They...

Just.  
**  
_DIDN'T._**

Happen...

But they did. They happened in Wisconsin when Danny had forced Vlad into a truce. They happened in Colorado, where Daniel had outsmarted Vlad in a game of time and technology.

They happened when Jack Fenton beat the crap out of him with Ghost-injuring brass knuckles.

They happened when an insane ghost woman was tearing up everything and everyone in sight and had somehow managed to summon enough hate-fueled energy to scar him with black fire. They happened when Daniel had stolen the power that Vlad deserved.

And they apparently happened in the sky above the Midwest, as Danny once again humiliated him, despite youth. Despite lack of experience.

They **_did_** happen. Failures that Vlad just couldn't tolerate, failures that nagged at the back of his mind and sent echoes of hate through his heart. The thief would take everything, and right now there was nothing he could do about it. Only Daniel's childhood naivety would save Vlad's life, only _mercy. _Such a detestable thing to Vlad mercy was. A sign of strength of will Vlad couldn't hope to muster. A sign of weakness or fear that Vlad couldn't desire even—if he wanted to. Such a paradox.

"Vlad Plasmius will not stand for this!" Vlad said, lapsing into the stereotypical villainous dialog cliché of talking of himself in third person. Summoning a portion of the energy Danny gave him, he threw a magenta blast at the hovercraft containing all Jack's stuff. The explosion would have lit up the sky if it had been night. As it stood, it was just another flashing light and thundering sound in yet another battle Vlad couldn't win. At least Jack would have to pay for the gear.

Vlad rose and saw Danny, now back to normal, staring at him with hate in his eyes. Vlad shrieked in fear like a little girl. It suddenly occurred to him that Danny might only have saved him so that he could kill him personally.

So be it, for death would be preferable to this humiliation. Faster than Vlad could see it, Danny's fist flashed into Vlad's face, causing, among other things, a broken nose and a mild concussion.

"Vlad." Danny bit out. "Killing you would satisfy what I really want. That is, for you to leave me alone. But that really wouldn't be sufficient justice. You destroyed what I came to retrieve, so I guess there's nothing form me here now."

Danny reached into Vlad's mind, and just like he'd done with his burning enemy Flammadea, he unloaded memories into Vlad's mind, all his memories of the terrible alternate future, all the glory Vlad had taken from the world, and all the glory Danny had taken from Vlad. But mostly, all the pain that Tucker's death and Sam's death of faith had caused him. All the pain of seeing his sister almost catatonic, living life as if staring at the wall was the most important thing she could be doing. Perhaps dreaming of better worlds. Of better people than the monsters that inhabited her future. All that Vlad had caused, Danny let Vlad know about it. All the suffering would be a jolt, but all that Vlad had lost would really burn the most. It was the worst humiliation Danny could think of. He withheld several memories though.

Marty.

Flare.

Amber.

The Hopefire and the transformation. If Vlad knew of that, thinks could get hairy.

But Vlad would remember the hell of it all.

Vlad passed out and detransformed, and Danny took the Amulet of Roasha from his jacket, then crushed it in his bare hand, then stomped it into the ground...

Danny walked away. The DeLorean swooped down and landed near the remains of the crashed hovercraft.

Marty stared at him in disbelief. "That was amazing!" he screamed. "What did you do to him?"

But Danny didn't answer. "Let's go home." was all he said.

* * *

Danny entered his room that evening, thankful and full of pure unrelenting joy at how things had turned out. He looked out his window, and saw the DeLorean blast off, and lay back on his bed... atfirst he thought he'd drifted off to sleep, but the clock told him otherwise.. 

But his head swam.. So peculiar.

Danny blinked, suddenly confused and disoriented... He had just traveled into the future. Right? And there was a big battle. But why was it all so fuzzy now? Still, the pain wasn't. Tucker, Sam. His father. All of those memories still hurt. But he would never have to suffer through such a future.

Still, the sudden vagueness of it all bothered him. For all he could remember, it could have been Marty McFly from the _Back to the Future_ films that took him to the future. Maybe it was Clockwork. That would be the most logical explanation…. But why would Clockwork mess with his memories? Unless changing the time stream had altered his memories.

Danny shook his head. "Best not to think about it." He turned over on his bed and was soon fast asleep.

* * *

Timmy Turner looked down at the blank DVD case as the words "Back to the Future" faded in onto a blue background, followed by a picture of characters from that film. 

"Did I just…?" Timmy suddenly asked. "Ugh. I remember now. I swear I'm never wishing a movie to be reality again."

"Um, I hate to break it to you, Sport," said Wanda, "but that's what you said after you wished _When Singing Nazis Attack_ real."

Cosmo piped in, "And _Jurassic Park_."

Wanda. "And _Chronicles of Riddick_."

Cosmo. "And _Crash Nebula_."

Wanda. "And _Showgi_—"

"I GET THE POINT!" Timmy blurted, sighing in frustration. "But this time I mean it." Timmy walked over and jumped on his bed, thought for a moment, and then said, "Hey! Wouldn't it be cool if Alias were real! I could like date **and** fight evil with Jennifer Garner!"

"Ugh!" Wanda sighed.

Cosmo's eyes became hearts, and he held up a wand and a picture of the show's star. "DONE!" The world changed again, though in went largely unnoticed.

**Amity Park, Indiana, Saturday, January 29th, 2005, 7:30 AM.**

Danny preempted his alarm clock by half an hour this morning, so he had enough time to get ready for school and over to Tucker's house before Sam did. As he entered Tucker's room, he heard Tucker, oddly enough, freestyle rapping.

"Take the D to the S!  
MP3s, PSPs, and C.Ds!  
NPCs PS3s, I got ADD!"

Of course it was about technology! What else would Tucker rap about?

"Hey, T-Diddy," Danny mocked, earning a blush from his friend, "anything weird happen yesterday?"

"You mean besides your dad almost getting killed by Vlad… Again?"

"Almost," Danny smiled. "Almost is good."

"You alright?"

"Yeah, Tuck. I'm fine."

Tucker eyed him quizzically." You sure?"

"Oh, yeah. Couldn't be better!"

The two headed off to school, even as the terrible future became a terrible memory and nothing more. The future, as it looked now, was bright. But… Looks can be deceiving.

* * *

**Master's Castle, Wisconsin**

Vlad sat in his massive throne, sulking. He was defeated again, humiliated. And what had Danny done? Given him a bunch of painful memories that weren't even his own. But he had created them. Vlad's plan **had** succeeded, he realized. But that insolent child had changed something!

It was too much! First he'd stolen the Primmortal power, and that was bad enough. But now, this? Far too much. Vlad sighed. Even if Danny had thought he was just giving Vlad painful memories, he had also given him an idea.

"Daniel," he seethed. "You will regret the day you crossed Vlad Plasmius!"

**THE END**

**Marty McFly**

**Doctor Emmet Brown**

**Danny Phantom  
and**

**The Fairly Odd Parents  
**

**in**

**Time Phantom: The DeLorean Chronicles**

**Written by Benjamin "Chaltab" English**

**Starring:**

**David Kaufman - Danny Phantom**

**Kath Soucie - Maddie Fenton/Lunch Lady**

**Rob Paulsen - Jack Fenton/Box Ghost/Technus, Tooth Ghost**

**Grey Delise - Samantha Manson, Vicky the Evil Babysitter**

**Colleen O'Shaughnessey - Jazz Fenton**

**Rickey D'Shon Collins - Tucker Foley**

**Cree Summers - Valerie Grey**

**Michael J. Fox - Marty McFly**

**Dan Castellaneta - Doc Brown**

**Ron Pearlman - Lanceresque Cop/Deathstroke**

**Tara Strong - Sizzle (Flashback)/Amber McLean/Penelope Spectra/Raven (Flashback)/Timmy Turner**

**Susan Blakeslee - Wanda**

**Darin Norris – Cosmo/Richard Rose**

**S. Scott Bullock - Dash Baxter**

**Maria Canals - Paulina**

**Kathlene Herles - Dora Toledo**

**Sasha Toro - Dora's Back Pack**

**James Sei - Qwan**

**Kevin Michael Richardson - Skulker**

**William Baldwin - Johnny Thirteen**

**Chynna Phillips - Kitty Thirteen**

**Martin Mull - Vlad Plasmius**

**Thomas F. Wilson - Biff/Cliff/Buford Tannen**

**Fox Rommel - Leonard Nimoy**

**Dante Basco - Flare**

**Khary Peyton - Cyborg (Flashback)**

**Lauren Tom - Gyzz/Jinx (Flashback)**

**Kevin Kline - Noel/Savior (Flashback)**

**Hynden Walch - Starfire (Flashback)**

**Crispin Glover -Deal**

**Seth McFarlane - Ghost Peter**

**Go see Legend Maker. She's not working on the sequel yet, but… she says she will. Eventually. I hope. Anyone who's read this will enjoy it. Probalby a lot more than you did mine. I had a lot of fun writing this, even if I did get in over my head on this one. Anyways. I'll let you go now. **

**Bye. Seriously. The story is over. Go away!**

**I mean it!  
**


End file.
